


The Sunlight Comes For Free

by astrologicallyDubious (ruination_fangs)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-07-28 14:43:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 37
Words: 77,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7645048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruination_fangs/pseuds/astrologicallyDubious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The summoning spell was supposed to pull some dark servant from the depths of the Void to be her new familiar. Unfortunately, when you do it wrong, it's easy to get something completely different - even a sky spirit.</p><p>A weirdly-human-looking, kind of obnoxious sky spirit at that. But as a novice witch, Rose has to take all the help she can get...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> originally published over several years on the [homestuck kink meme](http://homesmut.dreamwidth.org/38154.html?thread=39893002), reposted here with minor edits in (ideally) a more reasonable timeframe

"Shgbv throl... fn'nyluadn kryrpr hrotrahtj... shgbv throl..."

The words are strange, heavy almost, tripping across Rose's tongue with a foreign sort of power. Broodfester, the tome says; language of the dark, the terrible, those unfathomable creatures which dwell only in the void.

Rose studies the script carefully, sitting in the middle of her bed with the old book in front of her. It's taken her a while to learn how to read it - so many of the characters are ancient, faded from use like so much of witchcraft itself - but despite the difficulty, she's translated it all into something pronounceable enough for the human throat. She knows it now, and today is the day she can put it to use.

Sliding off the bed, Rose picks up the book, large enough that she has to carry it in both hands, and steps cautiously out of her room. Best not to run into Mother at a time like this.

It's not that her mother disapproves of her foray into the dark arts, however opposed it may be to her own line of work - some sort of science, Rose is certain, but her mother is as cryptic about the details of her discipline as Rose is about her magic. No, Roxy Lalonde loves magic and has even encouraged her daughter to continue studying it with "gifts" that Rose suspects were secretly meant as jabs at her choice of hobbies. Whatever. Those supplies will come in handy today.

The hallway is empty, and the house is silent; her mother is probably in her workshop. So much the better. Rose doesn't stop muttering the chant to herself as she hauls the book up the staircase leading to the observatory, a circular room which in recent weeks has become markedly less practical for actual observation, as Rose has covered it in scattered notes, candles, chalk, string, jars, and whatever else might be useful for practicing magic. She's had little trouble with the simpler spells – lighting the candles without matches, getting an image of her house to appear in a large glass marble that had to stand in for a crystal ball. It's time to try something more difficult.

In the little light left before the sun sinks behind the trees, Rose opens some of the windows that make up most of the wall and examines the room. The supplies haphazardly stacked along the edge of the room are untouched; the candles are arranged exactly how she left them. Mother wasn't lying, then, when she said she'd trust Rose to do whatever she wanted with her newfound skills, "as long as you don't summon somemmom *some huge an horrific tentaclebeast to keep as a pet."

That's all right, then. She plans to summon only a small and moderately terrible tentacle creature to employ as a servant.

From the heap of potential equipment - she really should organize this someday - she pulls out a stick of wax, a porcelain dish, a quill, and a small container of dried herbs, which she settles with in the center of the room after lighting all the candles. Extensive research has told her that this is all she needs.

(Well, okay, the candles aren't strictly necessary, but it's not her fault if standard sorcery procedures are decidedly lacking in ambiance.)

Step one: melt the wax into the bottom of the dish. It's actually pink sealing wax for letters (her mother's favorite color), but she's taken what she can get. She doesn't think the gods will care much what quality or hue it happens to be.

Step two: use the quill to inscribe the summoning rune in the wax before it sets. Easy.

Step three: add to the dish a few crumbled wormwood leaves and pieces of vandal root to aid in the calling. Okay, done.

Step four: recite the required summoning chant. Do not stop until the being to be summoned appears.

Rose takes a deep breath. She's been repeating it in her head up until now; all she has to do is verbalize it.

"Shgbv throl... fn'nyluadn kryrpr grotrhagt... shgbv throl..."

Step five: light the herbs on fi–

The moment she drops the match into the dish the whole thing goes up in more smoke than she thought possible, and she falls backwards onto her palms, too surprised to continue chanting. A gust of air whips around the room, putting out the candles so that between the smog and the darkening sky Rose can't see anything for a few moments.

The smoke makes her throat itch; one coughing fit later, she opens her eyes to find the air clearing. Once she snaps the nearest candles lit again, she can make out a vaguely-humanoid shape through the haze, something long and tail-like fluttering in the remnants of the wind, and yes she did it she actually summoned–!

But the more she can see, the more she thinks it's awfully plain for a creature of the void; it's about her size, wearing bright clothes in shades of blue, and its "tail" is made of fabric, hanging limp in the stilled air. It may be floating, but apart from that it looks... decidedly human.

This is not what she wanted.

When she stands up and finally meets its eyes through the thin smog that remains, it looks about as confused as she feels.

"What just happened?" it says, and its voice sounds male, but with none of the resonance she'd expect from an immortal. "Where am I?"

Rose opens her mouth and then closes it. The creature moves forward, and Rose instinctively steps back.

"Who are you?" she demands, and realizes only a few seconds later that he asked the same thing at the same time.

Flustered, she brushes some of the debris off the front of her skirt and looks around for her book. "Something must have gone wrong," she murmurs, and strides forward as her eyes light on the tome, laying open near the wall. "The summoning chant... what did I say...?"

Watching her kneel down by the book, the creature says, "Oh, I get it. You summoned me, right?" She ignores him and flips back to the correct page in the dim light. "Hey! I'm trying to talk to you! Don't pretend you don't understand me, I can hear you muttering to yourself."

He's quiet for a moment, and then suddenly his voice comes from directly over Rose's shoulder: "What are you even looking at?"

The page almost tears in her hand as she starts, jerking away from him. "Wh– how did you-"

"I flew, duh! You really should pay more attention, especially when you summon someone. Have humans gotten this rude since I was last down here?"

He frowns and looks around the room, and Rose regards him warily from her spot at his feet. If she hadn't seen him floating moments ago - and if he hadn't appeared in a cloud of smoke, that too - she would probably mistake him for just an average human. His shirt is light blue, inscribed with an even paler symbol that she doesn't recognize, and it and his dark blue pants are made of no fabric she's ever seen before. What she initially mistook for a tail is part of his hood, bunched around his neck and pooling on the ground behind him like a deflated windsock. The top of his shoes are the color of the sun, and almost as bright, despite the lack of light in the room.

But more shocking is the sheer mediocrity of his face. He has short black hair and dark gray-blue eyes and prominent front teeth and rectangular glasses. He's not even human and he's wearing _glasses_.

What exactly did she get, here?

He looks back down at her. "Well? Are you gonna actually talk to me now?"

Rose clears her throat and gets to her feet, hoisting the book up with her. "I'm not sure there's much to say. There's obviously been a mistake."

"I'll say! People don't summon sky spirits very often. What were you expecting?"

"I was trying to summon something from the void, but I must have pronounced something wrong if I called forth just a sky spirit."

"Just a sky spirit?" He huffs. "Excuse you! I may not be from the void but I'm just as immortal, you know!"

"Yes, I'm sure." Rose props the book up on a windowsill and begins skimming pages. It can't be that difficult to un-summon something, can it? Maybe she can just tell him to go away. It shouldn't take her too long to gather the requisite supplies one more time, find out where exactly she went wrong, and try again...

Except the spirit is still angry. "Hey, don't ignore me! You called me here, I'm your responsibility now or something."

"I have no interest in sky spirits. You're free to go."

"What is with your bigotry against sky spirits?" She turns around and he's got his arms crossed over his chest, petulant. "I'm still a hundred times more powerful than you, lay off."

"Oh?" Rose raises a brow, careful to make the action still look disinterested. "What can you do, blow me away?"

"I could, in fact!" He lifts a hand and a breeze stirs the remaining smoke in the room. Rose grips the windowsill, prepared for him to attempt to lift her out the window, but all that happens is the air clears, the musky smell of smoke replaced with fresh, evening pine-scent from outside.

He finishes, "But I won't because I'm your familiar or something and also because I'm not ten kinds of rude, like you."

Rose sighs and turns back to her book. This is definitely not what she wanted. Can't he at least be quiet while she finds out how to fix this?

Nope.

"In any case you're one to talk. What kind of half-assed witch are you? Not only did you fail to summon what you wanted, sky spirits are almost as far from creatures of the void as you can get! Did you chant it backwards or something?"

"Well if you're so smart and powerful," Rose growls without bothering to look up at him, "tell me how to get rid of you."

"I don't think you can!"

Wrong answer. She turns her head and he goes on. "When you summon a spirit you're making a pact, even if you fuck it up. Didn't your precious book tell you that?"

Rose meets his gaze and he stares defiantly back.

"So you're my familiar."

"And you're my witch."

"Wonderful."

"Stupendous, even."

She gives him a closer look, and he seems to return the favor. Her expression must not be as neutral as she thinks, because he says, "You know, if you already hate me so much you could just send me away. It won't break the pact and I can't go home but I don't have to be here."

For all the cynicism of the suggestion, he doesn't look very bitter about it. Rose considers for a moment and then shuts her book. "No, as long as you're here I might as well make use of you. I am a witch enough to bind you to me, after all."

"Okay, I'll give you that," he says, and smiles, and maybe he's not so bad after all.

"So." Rose attempts to compose herself and takes a long breath. "First impressions aside, if this is permanent perhaps we should attempt to start out on a better foot. I apologize if I was excessively rude. I just... was not expecting this."

"Heh, yeah, I mean... I guess I can see that." He folds his hands behind his back, looking a little sheepish. "I didn't mean to snap either, it's just... really weird, being on the ground after living in the sky for so long. I wasn't expecting it either!"

"Well, we have something in common then," Rose says, and attempts a smile. "My name is Rose Lalonde and, as I've probably made embarrassingly clear, I've never met a spirit before. Do you mind if I ask you some things?"

He seems to brighten at the prospect, rocking back and forth on his feet. "Go ahead! What are your questions?"

"I'll start with a simple one: do sky spirits have names?"


	2. Chapter 2

His name is John Egbert and she is moderately disappointed.  
  
What kind of a name is John Egbert for a sky spirit? Rose is relatively certain that had she summoned her familiar from the void as she had planned, it would have a name considerably more interesting. Something like Glo'rylr Skryychk or Fluhthgar the Terrible.   
  
John explains that as a sky spirit he lives, unsurprisingly, in the realm of the sky, and has in fact never been in contact with anything from the void. The very thought makes his face contort in mild disgust. His immortal life consists mostly of playing with the weather and occasionally watching the creatures on earth live their boring, mortal lives.  
  
"It's all kind of the same after a while, you know?" he says, sitting on the couch and playing with the tassels on a pillow. "I mean, you can only watch societies rise and fall so many times before you start to see patterns and predict what's going to happen. So I just kind of check in every once in a while, see what's up with humankind, if anything might have changed..." He shrugs.  
  
"You've interacted with humans before, yes?" Rose asks from the armchair across from him. Her fingers itch for her journal, but as much fun as it would be to document his experiences for posterity (or her own later reference), at this point she's not sure it's the second impression she wants to give off.  
  
"Yeah, but it was a while ago!" John puts the pillow down beside him and looks around the room. "Some things were a little different then, I guess. Not like humanity in general but languages and tools and stuff you see more close-up. It's kind of amazing how much things change even when they stay the same."  
  
Rose studies the way he bounces his leg restlessly, the way his eyes roam over everything around him, more interested in his surroundings than their discussion. As if he wasn't imparting some sort of otherworldly wisdom in the tone of voice one uses to talk about the weather.   
  
"I can't say my experiences have given me a perspective from which to agree."  
  
"I know, a lot of mortals just don't get it. I guess if you live only a couple decades it's hard to understand that life goes on without you? Humans are sort of short-sighted, really."  
  
_He's hundreds of years old at the least_ , Rose thinks, and the juxtaposition of his age and his teenage face strikes her as somewhat unnerving. His conception of time, of life itself, must be so different from hers. There are so many things she could ask him that she's not really sure where to begin.  
  
Maybe existential philosophy can wait, though. It's late on a spring evening and she has just unintentionally invited a very human-esque spirit into her home. That kind of takes precedence.  
  
"So. Summoning," she eventually says, drawing his attention back to her. "I'll admit my sources were a little vague on the details of the pact. I've been led to believe that when a being from another realm is summoned by a human, they automatically form a connection."  
  
"Yep. It's immediate, and binding."  
  
"And you're saying there's no way to reverse it? At all?"  
  
He seems to realize that he hasn't examined the floor yet. "Well... I mean there  _is_ , but..."  
  
_There_ is _, he says_. Why wasn't he forthcoming with this information earlier? Rose crosses her arms and taps her index finger against her sleeve. "Care to elaborate?"  
  
"Pacts are supposed to be binding for life," John says slowly. "And I can't really die, so of course the easiest way for me to go free would be if _you_  died..."  
  
There's nothing sinister about the way he says it, but that doesn't stop the goosebumps that spread across Rose's arms. "Is it... legal, for lack of a better word, for familiars to kill their summoners?"  
  
"Well we're not _supposed_ to." John looks up and Rose fails to be reassured at all. "That would kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn't it? Humans don't have much to offer spirits, so they'd all just kill their associated witches and leave as soon as they got bored. But I don't know about indirectly killing someone..."  
  
"...I see. And you know of no other way?"  
  
John slumps back into the couch. "I think there probably  _is_ , somehow? But I don't know it."  
  
"You're not omniscient, then."  
  
"Of course not! Sky spirits aren't really gods, we just control the weather. I mean, there are things we just  _know_ , like how a pact is supposed to work and stuff, but everything else I've just learned by watching people." His eyes move back to the few pictures that decorate the wall. "It's kind of superfluous information for us, you know?"  
  
"You're granted instinctual knowledge of pacts but not how to terminate them? The more I come to know about magic the more ridiculous and completely arbitrary its rules sound."  
  
"Well, I don't actually know how to start a pact either, so maybe that's for the summoner to figure out." He shrugs again.  
  
"What  _do_  you know? Isn't the primary function of a familiar to assist its witch in matters of sorcery?"  
  
John gestures vaguely with his hands. "And like... generally be in your service? With things that humans can't do alone. Like quest for knowledge or conquer kingdoms or whatever it is you guys do. So I know things about magic, and spirit things that humans don't know I guess? And my job is to help you out."  
  
Rose leans back and looks up at the ceiling. "It's a little odd, isn't it? That by the rules of sorcery a mortal is allowed to summon something divine and employ it essentially as a servant, giving almost nothing in return? Why would the godly accept such a thing?"  
  
At the edge of her vision she sees him frown. "Well we're not really servants; you can't  _make_  us do anything. And some spirits like hanging around humans, for the offerings or just out of curiosity. But I dunno, that's just the way it is! Maybe it's because humans are so weak to begin with? I mean, you're at the mercy of spirits all your life – not usually directly but we can like, manipulate your circumstances and everything... To be honest you kind of need us if you want any real power."  
  
"And yet not only has sorcery become something of a frowned-upon activity, but even to those of us who practice it eagerly it's fraught with well-kept secrets. It took a good deal of research for me to find out that summoning exists, much less how to go about doing it."  
  
"Well, it's not our faults if you're all too stupid to take advantage of what we offer you."  
  
John's fingers dance against his leg rhythmically; something about it makes Rose anxious. He's probably not used to sitting inside at all, much less sitting still this long. She ventures, "Would you be more comfortable if we stepped outside?"  
  
He immediately brightens, sitting up a little straighter and stopping his fidgeting. "Can we? I've been wondering where we are. I saw trees out the window upstairs, but..."  
  
"Of course. I'm not sure you'll be able to see much anymore, though." She stands up, gesturing for him to follow, and he floats behind her to the front door. The air is a little chilly when she steps outside; the sun is long gone, the trees surrounding the house lit by nothing but thin moonlight. John's face takes on a new expression of mild fascination as he looks around. Can he really see anything? Rose wonders if he even needs the glasses – maybe his eyesight is already better than a human's.   
  
The lack of footsteps on the wooden porch as John moves to the railing is ethereal, almost ghostly. Rose nearly wishes she'd done this earlier in the day. As much as she appreciates the ambiance of dusk, it's not ideal for everything.  
  
"Do you live out here all alone?" he asks. "I thought humans usually lived in groups."  
  
"No, my mother lives here too." Rose leans forward, hesitates, and then joins him at the edge of the porch. "But it's just the two of us, yes. We're a bit far from town."  
  
"Why? You haven't been, like, exiled for being a witch, have you?"  
  
Rose chuckles under her breath. "No, the ostracism is entirely self-imposed. I'm fairly certain I've done nothing to earn myself a reputation yet. At least not like that." After a moment she adds, "My mother may have, to some degree; she's known as a bit of an eccentric in certain circles. But not for witchcraft."  
  
John swings his legs up to sit on the railing. "What does she do?"  
  
"Locks herself in a laboratory all day for the sake of some kind of 'scientific inquiries.' Perhaps astronomy at one time, but she rarely uses the observatory anymore." Rose taps her fingernails against the rail. "I suspect a form of alchemy. At the least, she certainly does love mixing drinks."  
  
Rose glances aside, not sure if John is listening anymore. His gaze is fixed to the right of the house, though Rose can see nothing there.

"Do I hear water?"  
  
"There's a river not too far off. I think it's partially why Mother chose to live here. Goodness knows there's little other reason to relocate yourself and your one-year-old daughter to the middle of the woods."  
  
A few minutes pass in silence, apart from the chirping of crickets and occasional croaking of frogs. Rose focuses on the sounds; eventually she can hear the faint rush of the river in the distance. John seems enamored with the stars, almost as if he can see something Rose can't in the sky. It makes her skin crawl, but the look on his face is so intent that she hardly dares disturb him.  
  
Eventually she has to. "It's getting late."  
  
"Yeah?" he says, distracted.  
  
"Well past my bedtime, even had I not spent the better part of my day attempting to invite the otherworldly into my house. And... succeeding, I suppose."  
  
He seems to pick up on her discomfort, looking back to her and tilting his head slightly. "Did you plan this out at all?"  
  
"I was well aware that my new familiar would be living here with me," Rose says, unable to keep the defensiveness out of her voice. "I just didn't expect him to be so..."  
  
"So?"  
  
"Human." She pauses. "Ish."  
  
"You were expecting like, a pet dog, except with tentacles and probably the ability to speak and vast knowledge of the deep to aid you in your dark sorcery."  
  
"...I prefer cats, but yes."  
  
"Well!" John says, resting his hands behind his head and leaning backwards leisurely. "I'm not a dog! But I'm not really a human, either, so it's not like you're inviting a strange man into your house for the night."  
  
_No, just a strange not-quite-man for forever_ , she thinks, but wills herself to relax a little.  
  
"In any case, I'm going to bed. Do you need a place to sleep?"  
  
"Nah, I don't need to sleep." The wind picks up a little as John jumps up to stand on the railing, and Rose only now begins to feel cold. "I mean, I can sleep, but I don't have to, so I'd rather explore if it's all the same to you."  
  
The tip of his windsock-hood dances in the breeze; he seems to have no trouble at all balancing on the thin rail. Rose considers how many hours are left before the sun rises and how much trouble an unchecked spirit could cause in that amount of time.  
  
"...Is it all the same to you?" he asks, looking down at her over his shoulder. It occurs to Rose that he might need her permission to leave, or perhaps only wants it - one word and he stays here all night.  
  
Like a wild bird in a cage, she thinks, and says, "Yes. But don't let anyone see you, and don't cause any storms or mess with anything. These are orders."  
  
"Fine, fine. And stop being so mistrusting!" He smiles before floating off the porch, twisting to see her better. "I'm not going to kill you in your sleep, you know. That would be really rude."  
  
"That makes me feel so much better."  
  
"You're welcome! I'll be back in the morning, just call for me when you want me!"  
  
Without waiting for a response, he simply vanishes into the air, and Rose is left staring at the trees behind where he was hovering. After a long moment she takes a deep breath and turns to go inside. Regardless of how many answers she's gotten in the past few hours, she doesn't think she'll be short on things to ask tomorrow.


	3. Chapter 3

What wakes Rose isn't the sunlight, which she knew would be creeping in her window before she was ready to get up - nor is it John, whom she almost expected to be sitting at the foot of her bed like an impatient puppy.   
  
What wakes Rose is her mother knocking on her door. "Rooose, would you mind terribly if I asked you to run some errands for me today?"  
  
"Nngh... what?..."  
  
"Woooonderful, I'll leave the lists outside your door. I'll be in my workshop if you need me, have a nice day sweetie!"  
  
By the time her footsteps fade away, Rose has managed only to prop herself on one elbow and rub her eyes open. It must be nearly afternoon by the strength of the sunlight. That doesn't surprise her; even after her late discussion with John, she had trouble sleeping, instead staring at the dark corners of her room as if she expected him to appear and haunt her like a ghost, or listening for wind strong enough to shake the house. Neither happened.  
  
She remembers that John said he would be back by morning, but he's nowhere in sight. The temptation to leave him be and see how long it takes him to return – if he hasn't simply run, or rather flown, away - tugs at her, but she's more curious about what he said about calling him. Surely he can't hear her if he's out flying around?  
  
Prepared to feel dumb if nothing happens, she tries, "John?"  
  
The air stirs and he materializes in front of her, floating cross-legged at bed-level. "Yeah?"  
  
Rose blinks a few times. "I wasn't expecting you to be so prompt."  
  
"What reason would I have to delay?"  
  
"No, it's not that, it's..." She sits up, combing through her hair with one hand. "Were you here the whole time?"  
  
"Nah, I was outside."  
  
"Then how...?"  
  
"Oh, how did I hear you? It's just a thing familiars do! We know when we're being called. Otherwise how would you contact us?"  
  
Rose tosses aside her sheets and John drifts back, giving her space to stand up. "So did you want something, or...?"  
  
"Yes, actually, it seems I've accidentally volunteered to go into town today, and I supposed you would want to accompany me. For the experience if nothing else."  
  
"Oh, yeah, I'm game!"  
  
"Excellent. Give me half an hour to change and eat breakfast. Er, I suppose you don’t eat either...?"  
  
He shakes his head. "Don't need to. I'll just, uh... go back outside then, so you can get dressed."  
  
This time when he vanishes she can see him, air that gleams blue as it rushes through the crack underneath the door. Rose figures that means he really did leave; still, she can't help but glance over her shoulder as she changes clothes.  
  
She calls for him again after she's finished eating, and he trails behind her as she prepares to leave, startling her whenever she turns around.  _Sure you didn't get a puppy?_  she thinks to herself as she picks up the money her mother left for her. A talking spirit puppy. One that can't be leashed.  
  
Eventually she stops and examines him, floating a good six inches from the floor, hood dragging behind him.  
  
"...You do know how to walk, don't you?"  
  
His feet touch the ground again, maybe unconsciously. "Of course! Why wouldn't I?"  
  
"I don't believe I've seen you take more than two steps on solid ground since we met. You hover."  
  
"Of course I hover!" The breeze picks up again as John lifts into the air without moving a muscle, his hood unwinding until it no longer rests on the ground. "It's kind of first-nature for us. Not a lot of ground in the sky, you know?"  
  
"That may be, but there is an awful lot of ground down here, and most people are accustomed to walking on it. And, more importantly, seeing others walk on it. If you continue to fly everywhere you'll be discovered in no time."  
  
John leans over until he's lying parallel with the ground, head propped on his elbow, which is propped on absolutely nothing. The pose strikes Rose as completely ridiculous in midair, but it seems entirely natural to him.  
  
"So?" he says. "Who cares if I'm a sky spirit?"  
  
"I assure you plenty of people will care. Spirits are not a common sight around here, and witches sometimes are not taken to very kindly."  
  
"Even harmless ones like you?" At Rose's withering glance John adds, "That's not even what I meant! I don't think you want to hurt them." He pauses. "Even if you could."  
  
Rose sighs. "Yes, rub it in. But that's not my point. I don't know how friendly the otherworldly, witches, and the rest of humankind were on the occasion of your last visit to earth, but the general populace can be very... intolerant of things they don't understand. Unless they decide to deify you and refuse to leave you alone, they'll likely attempt to prove you a sham, or kill you."  
  
"Pft, it's not like they could do any of those things!" In one sharp motion John rights himself and starts twirling one hand, gathering the wind in a tight loop around his fingers that makes the loose edges of his clothes ripple. "They'd never be able to catch me, much less kill me! Humans are hilariously powerless when it comes to dealing with spirits. Especially the ones who aren't witches."  
  
"That may be so, but you are not the only one in potential danger here. If they find out you're my familiar, they likely will hold me completely accountable for your entire existence, and, as you said–" she can't resist rolling her eyes – "I am no threat to a mob. Was the phrase 'burn the witch' a commonplace the last time you were here?"  
  
"Burn the witch...?" John continues playing with the wind, but for a moment his expression takes on a faraway, contemplative look that sends a jolt of alarm up Rose's spine. Should she not have told him that? He's supposed to be a free spirit in every sense of the words, and all he'd have to do is get someone else to kill her, and what if he really -  
  
"You're being paranoid, Rose," he says, and for a brief moment she's terrified he can read minds too - until he goes on, "I don't think your townspeople would really want to kill you! You gotta give them some credit. And even if they did it wouldn't matter, because I can protect you! That's what familiars do, right?"  
  
Rose is reluctant to admit it even to herself, but the idea does imbue her with a strange sense of power and... safety, even. He may not be as dangerous as the servant she wanted, but he's right - he is still a demigod. He probably could repel a mob with a flick of his wrist.  
  
"Still, I'd rather we not run the risk to begin with. Just try to keep your feet on the ground around other people?"  
  
John lands again, bouncing on his feet as he touches down. "Aw, fine. I can pretend to be human, I guess. But it's not like I've seen another human yet! Are we  _ever_  leaving?"  
  
"For someone who spends centuries doing nothing but watching clouds, you're awfully impatient."  
  
"I could have gone to the town and come back in the time it's taken you to get ready to go, and I barely even know where it is!"  
  
"Yes, you also fly. Now before we go, come here for a moment."  
  
Rose leads him to a small closet near the door, and he stands next to her, fidgeting a little uncomfortably as she looks him up and down.  
  
"Your clothes are pretty odd. They'll stand out too much."  
  
"What, these?" he asks, pulling on the fabric of his shirt. "Isn't this what people wear nowadays?"  
  
Rose opens the closet and starts rummaging through coats and jackets. "If by that you mean shirts and pants, yes. Bright yellow shoes and hoods nearly twice as long as the wearer is tall, not so much." He doesn't respond, so she continues, "The color is a bit unusual as well, and the symbol itself may elicit some suspicion of sorcery, but more pertinent to my interests, the fabric looks pretty foreign. In fact I'd like to examine it sometime if you don't mind-"  
  
When she turns to look at him, she comes face to fabric with his shirt, dangling from an outstretched hand, and has to bend backwards to avoid it. Slowly her eyes travel down his arm to his bare torso; his other hand grips his coiled up hood and yep he is certainly wearing nothing but his glasses from the waist up.  
  
"What?" he says. "I thought you wanted to see my shirt."  
  
Composing herself, Rose says, "I didn't necessarily mean right this moment. But okay." She accepts the shirt and, almost as an afterthought, pulls a drab brown cloak out of the closet and tosses it at him. "Try this on."  
  
While he blows the dust off the cloak without opening his mouth, Rose runs a hand over his shirt. It's softer than she expected, almost a little stretchy, and - surprise, surprise - light and airy.  
  
"What is this made of?"  
  
"Huh?" John is struggling to get the cloak on properly. "I dunno, it's just clothes."  
  
"It's just clothes."  
  
"Yeah. Clothes. I don't know about clothes, they're weird and human."  
  
The shirt is only a little bigger than hers, though certainly looser; for a moment Rose is tempted to try it on, but no, that might be a little forward, even with a guy who apparently has no shame half-stripping in front of her.   
  
She looks up to see said guy adjusting the cloak on his shoulders. It runs well past his knees, covering almost all of his torso and much of his legs. He looks markedly more normal without the hood - perhaps a little  _too_ normal, as if his odd attire was part of his very identity as a spirit, and Rose reminds herself again that he isn't as human as he looks.  
  
"Perfect," she says, handing the shirt back and dragging out an old pair of boots before shutting the closet. "Wear these. Now we can go."  
  
"Wait, what?" Only John's head turns to follow her as she strides past him. "I thought you were getting me clothes. Like, real clothes."  
  
Rose runs through her mental checklist: Mother's supplies. Satchel of money. Small dagger in case of emergencies. Her own jacket. John-  
  
"I don't have real clothes for you to wear. Unless you'd like to wear mine, but I'm not sure you'd find that they fit very well."  
  
It's only when she heads out the door that he decides to follow, still tugging on one boot; while she takes the few stairs from the porch to the ground, he continues to float at the same level.  
  
"Those are really all the clothes you have in that gigantic house?"  
  
"There's Mother's as well, of course, but I don't think she'd approve of me raiding her closet to give her clothes to a stranger."  
  
The light dims as they enter the forest, following a well-trod but narrow road. John sinks little by little until his shoes skid against the ground; he seems to have trouble moving his legs the right way to support his body, and Rose nearly fails to resist the urge to dig her palm into her face.  
  
"Do I need to teach you how to walk?"  
  
"What, no, I'm totally fine! I can do this. I'm a pro at this walking thing, just give me a minute."  
  
Rose stops to watch him totter forward awkwardly, frowning at his feet as if they're acting independently of the rest of him. "Walking is one of the first things human infants learn to do, and it looks like an actual effort on you."  
  
"No, screw you, I've got this."  
  
John straightens his back a little and moves more deliberately, putting one foot in front of the other and being careful to stay weighted on the ground. As Rose begins to follow him again he starts to speed up, a little more casual in his movements; she draws even with him and he sticks his tongue out.  
  
"There. I can move my feet across a horizontal surface without drifting away. It took me like two minutes to learn how to walk. How long do you think it'll take you to learn how to fly?"  
  
"It's rather more astounding that you had to learn at all, almighty spirit of the heavens."  
  
"No, we're done with this, I win you lose. What were we talking about before?" John nearly trips over a little bump in the path but rights himself easily and ignores Rose's snickering. "Right, you and your mom live alone. So you don't have a father?"  
  
Rose's smile fades and she considers answering with a lesson in tact - but it's no big secret anyway, so she says simply, "Oh, I'm sure I do somewhere, but he left so long ago I don't even remember what he looked like. Mother rarely mentions him. I don't think he's much missed."  
  
"Huh. Okay then."  
  
They walk in silence for a while, John studying the trees and bushes that Rose has long since memorized. Pockets of light creep through the branches and leaves overhead, dappling the path, and John takes each opportunity to look up at the sky unobstructed. The longer they continue in the forest the more Rose notices him sticking a hand out to pull at his collar and looking moderately anxious.  
  
At one point he notices her noticing him. "This thing is kind of heavy," he says, elbowing it from inside. "I don't like it. Too much between me and the air."  
  
"Fond of loose, airy clothes?" Rose can't keep down a mischievous grin. "If that's what you want I could hook you up with a number of choice dresses. I'm sure they'd look good on you."   
  
For a moment John frowns, but he says, "That doesn't sound too bad, actually. This is just so... stifling. Heavy jackets and branches and ugh."  
  
"You don't like being under the trees."  
  
"No! They stop the wind, and you can barely even see the sky."  
  
"Don't worry, we'll be out of here soon."  
  
He hardly looks appeased. "We'd be out of here sooner if we flew. I'm just saying."  
  
"At this point I think my primary motivation for making you walk is to teach you a little patience. I promise you won't be spending the rest of your immortal life trapped in this forest."  
  
John only grunts in reply, so Rose goes on, "But we could find a better way to pass the time that might take your mind off it. Would you like to continue our discussion from last night? I don't believe my questions were quite comprehensive."  
  
"Okay! Ask me anything."  
  
"Quite the open-ended invitation. All right then. What, in your experience from a perspective outside of that considered the cultural norm here, would you say you find most intriguing about humanity in general? I'd love some examples to back up your views."  
  
John just sighs.


	4. Chapter 4

Despite John's suspicions, the trees do eventually thin and the road continues under open sky - right into the village.  
  
It's a bit smaller than he expected, a fairly quaint affair, but bustling with people in the mid-afternoon. Rose leads him down the main street, occasionally nodding or smiling politely at the villagers that greet her from porches or on the road. A few curious glances are directed at him, following close behind so as not to lose her; he tries to look natural, but being human-ish is still weird and having so many people so close makes him a little uncomfortable. The air smells like horses and there's no breathing room.  
  
The first place they stop is some sort of grocer, John presumes. Rose picks up a variety of food items that John pays little attention to, instead examining the people outside and the dog sitting by the door. It whines when he gets close, and he hurriedly backs off, remembering what Rose said about trying to blend in.  
  
_That's silly_ , John thinks, leaning against the counter while Rose pays.  _No one's going to say "oh that boy's making a dog uncomfortable, he's not human!"_  But the dog is still staring at him and wow how the hell does it  _know_? Animals are weird.  
  
Their next stop is a little darker and a little emptier. This time Rose seems to be bartering in glass vials; she gives a list directly to the woman behind the counter and politely answers questions about her life and her mother while the shopkeeper gathers the small bottles. At one point the woman retreats into the back of the shop and John sidles up next to Rose.  
  
"What is this stuff," he whispers.  
  
"Hell if I know," Rose says. "Mother needs it for her work. Some sort of chemical substances."  
  
With the vials cushioned on the inside of Rose's bag, they head back outside. John no longer has any idea where they are; all the roads look the same from here. It's hard to tell the difference between the people, too. How many of them are there? All completely separate individuals, living their own lives? They never look so unique from the air.  
  
As they walk down the same street they came up a few minutes before, John occupies himself with looking at the buildings - a lot are stores of numerous varieties, but some are totally plain. Houses, he guesses? One is definitely an inn; Rose said the town is on somewhat of a crossroads, so a lot of travelers come through. That must be why it's so busy right now.  
  
"John," Rose hisses, and he jerks his attention back to her. "Feet. Ground. Move your legs."  
  
Huh? He looks down and oops, yeah, the soles of his boots are a good inch or two off the ground. As he starts walking again he searches the faces of the people around him, but no one except Rose seems to have noticed. And she talked like they'd murder them on the spot. But oh well, it's probably for the better that she's wrong this time.  
  
Even John can tell that the next store belongs to a tailor. Inside are a variety of pre-made clothes on display, and a man who tips his hat as he greets Rose. John notes that she doesn't seem to like being addressed as "Miss Lalonde" very much (" _Miss Lalonde_  is my mother," she grumbles to him later), and that excessive small talk seems to frustrate her, and that she doesn't bat an eyelash as she rattles off some story about how her friend is visiting for a while and his clothes didn't fare well on the long journey.   
  
John kind of tunes out the rest as he lets his eyes roam over the various outfits in the room; it's just the tailor making conversation and Rose lying through her teeth. It's a little unsettling that she spins this off the top of her head so naturally. But then, she's a witch - it's probably a good skill for her to have.   
  
Well, kind of a witch. She seems pretty new to all this. Well-read, maybe, but not well-practiced. John wonders how different things might have been if he'd been summoned by someone with a lot more experience. Maybe someone with a good reason for calling him down instead of stumbling accidentally into a pact.  
  
But he supposes he's lucky, kind of, that he didn't get some totally crazy witch. Rose seems pretty stable at least; she's not hellbent on anything, she's never been exiled from anywhere, she lives comfortably. Even if she's not a really good witch (yet). Or maybe that's why she's so normal? Maybe once she learns more she'll still grow up to be some stereotypical crackpot living in a decrepit hut with an old cat, terrorizing children and practicing weird spells at night.  
  
Then he thinks, nah, that doesn't really seem like Rose. Not that he's learned a lot about Rose yet! She's spent most of her time asking about  _him,_  and still doesn't seem to be satisfied with what she's learned. When does he get his shot at twenty questions? Will she even answer them? She seemed responsive enough on the way into town when he could get a question in edgewise (and after he'd convinced her to ask after more practical matters), though he can't help but notice that she has a tendency to divert conversations away from herself.  
  
John doesn't really mind, though. It's kind of nice having someone to talk to - even if there really was a concept of "talking" in the realm of the sky no one would be fascinated by him like humans are - and he figures he'll have more than enough time to get to know her! She seems nice once you get past the sarcasm and aloofness, and very smart, and dedicated to what she's doing, and maybe kind of pretty? Not that he's had much to compare her to, in any aspect, but where he's from there's not a whole lot to look at, at least not close-up like this. So if nothing else she's interesting.  
  
In fact, now that he's seeing other humans, he's starting to realize how little he really does know about Rose. What does she do in her spare time besides magic? Where did her mother get the money for that huge house, and why, if it's only the two of them? How old is she, even? Doesn't she have any other frien--  
  
"John, are you listening?"  
  
"What?" His gaze snaps back to Rose, who, oops, is looking a little impatient. How much did he miss? "Sorry, I was thinking."  
  
"Could have fooled me. Try this on."  
  
Only now does he register that she's holding a shirt and the tailor is gone; John quickly locates him in the back, muttering over a stack of pants.  
  
Soon enough he's taken the clothes, the tailor's taken the money, and Rose leads John back out onto the street. He's still fussing with the seams and folds of the shirt. It's a little less comfortable than his own, the fabric not quite as soft, and a tad tighter. Less room to maneuver. Less magic, really. But then he supposes it doesn't matter much; it sounds like Rose doesn't come here all that often, so maybe he won't have to wear them that much.  
  
By the time they've delivered a couple sealed envelopes to a very enthusiastic mail carrier at the post office, John is getting used to the heavier material of his new pants and Rose declares that they've checked off everything on her mother's list.  
  
"Sweet, so we're heading home?"  
  
The look Rose gives him is a little odd, but fleeting. "Yes, I suppose so."  
  
Despite clouds gathering to the west, John can tell that the sun is beginning to sink closer to the horizon as they near the edge of town. He shrugs off his cloak and holds it awkwardly in one hand, then the other, before slinging it over his shoulder.  
  
"Hey, so, I was wondering," he begins once they start passing the last of the houses. "How old are you?"  
  
"Eighteen."  
  
"Eighteen years?"  
  
Rose makes no effort to conceal her eye roll. "No, John, eighteen months. I'm simply a toddler with a remarkable growth rate."  
  
"Okay, jeez, no need to get snippy about everything! Eighteen years, eighteen months, it's all the same to me when I'm not watching the ground."  
  
"Is that so? How old are  _you_?" Rose asks, and John shrugs.  
  
"Years don't really mean anything to me. I remember kingdoms rising and falling. But if I think far enough back things get kind of hazy? It's a lot for one consciousness I guess, even a non-human one."  
  
Rose nods her understanding, and for a while as they walk John can feel her shooting him occasional glances from the corner of her eye. She has a really... sharp gaze. Not quite judgmental, but analytical to be sure, like she can see right through him. Humans don't usually have purple eyes, do they?  
  
"Stop that," he finally says.   
  
"I was just wondering if there's any particular reason you look to be in my age range. Seeing as you're not actually a young man it seems rather arbitrary that you appear as such."  
  
John looks at his hands, flexing his fingers; if she'd asked him to guess the age of anyone they met today he'd have no idea. He hadn't even thought about what he must look like to them (beyond his apparently inappropriate clothing). So he's a young man?  
  
"I don't know! Is it the best age for a human to be?"  
  
"I'm in no position to say. Perhaps it's a subconscious ploy to form a closer bond with the summoner?"  
  
"Heh, maybe. Imagine if I was a middle-aged man following you everywhere."  
  
"I'd rather not, really." They're back to the forest now, the trees growing thicker around them. John tries not to think about it too hard; luckily Rose is never out of questions. "Speaking of which, though, is there a reason you took a human form at all? Since you've led me to believe there's nothing particularly 'human' about being a sky spirit."  
  
"Well it's kind of like... an almost-human consciousness? Sort of? I don't know if I can describe it. I kind of have a windy body in the sky, but it's not really solid usually, so it would be hard for you to interact with down here. But it thinks almost like this! It's just that time and space and all that aren't really the same... So maybe, not human, but more human than anything else. Am I even making sense?"  
  
"Sense enough, I suppose. So you didn't choose to appear human."  
  
"Nope!" John stretches his arms out behind him. "That's just the way it happened. One minute I'm playing with windmills, the next everything's swirling around me, and then I'm on the ground looking like this. Maybe another thing to make us  _identify_  or whatever."  
  
"And here the legends always speak of cats and ghosts. It's almost a shame. I could have made do with a cat. A black one, preferably, to frighten off the overly superstitious."  
  
"Oh no, that's not a road you want to start down. You get one black cat as an amateur witch and before you know it you're a crazy cat lady, except they're all mutant cats because you cast stupid spells on them that made them sprout extra eyes or turn green or something."  
  
Rose almost smiles. "Is this supposed to deter me?"  
  
"Do you want to be a crazy cat lady, Rose? Is that how you want to be remembered, in nursery rhymes and cautionary tales?"  
  
"I suppose I'll mark it down as my third option."  
  
"What were the first two?"  
  
"The first was to be a crazy tentacle-creature lady who summoned an aide from the void and became a certified master of the darkest of sorceries." There's an affectation to her voice that makes him sure she's kidding to some degree, but he can't help but wonder how much.  
  
"And the second is me? I'm flattered you like me more than mutant cats."  
  
"In your defense, neither the cats nor the tentacle beast would be likely to have your sense of humor."   
  
"Well at least I'm good for  _some_ thing, huh." But that may be the nicest thing she's said to him yet, so he smiles anyway.  
  
"As important as the role of my personal comedian is, I'm sure we'll find another use for you. I was thinking tonight we should look at some actual magic. Maybe you'll have some advice on how to handle the harder spells."  
  
"Hopefully!"  
  
They continue in silence for a few minutes. The forest is no more welcoming to John than it was in the morning, but it's a little brighter now in the late afternoon, and a light breeze tickles his bare arms.  
  
"I mean it though," he says after a while, "it would be a lot faster if we flew. I can take you too, you know."  
  
"Thanks, but no."  
  
"Aw come on, it's not just practical, it's really fun!"  
  
Rose doesn't even pause to consider. "I'll keep that in mind." But John must look more put out than he thinks, because she glances at him and goes on, "Eventually, John. Just not today."  
  
"Is that a promise?"  
  
"It's a tentative plan."  
  
Better than nothing, John supposes. As they continue he manages gradually to drift from the ground until he's floating along above it. Rose surely notices that he's stopped walking, but she says nothing, and he busies himself with kicking small rocks down the path the rest of the way, using the wind to retrieve them when they roll off the road. Rose seems a little more relaxed, at least, occasionally kicking the pebbles for him when they bounce into her path, and John decides that, yeah, she seems like as good a witch as any to have.


	5. Chapter 5

The undersides of the few clouds in the sky are streaked with red by the time Rose and John reach the house. One of the windows by the door is lit from the inside, and Rose eyes it warily as she ascends the porch steps.  
  
"I suppose you won't need dinner," she says.  
  
"No, not really... why?"  
  
Rose's footsteps echo hollowly under the planks of the porch; John's feet don't touch the ground. In his new clothes he looks less like a newly-summoned assistant in the dark arts than before and, as nice as the inconspicuousness was in town, Rose isn't really liking the "human boy" look right now.  
  
"You have little reason to stick around for the evening, then," she says, stopping in front of the door. "Supper is generally a rather boring affair, and we won't be able to talk much until afterwards."  
  
"Wait, what about your mother, though?" John asks, trying to peer past the thin shade drawn on the inside of the window. "Then I wouldn't get to meet her!"  
  
"Yes, that is exactly what I'm-"  
  
But before she can explain the door flies open and Ms. Lalonde steps out to give her daughter a hug. "Rosie dear, welcome back! You brought home my supplies from the apothecary? And a li'l somethin' else?"  
  
With a grin just a little too sly she turns to John, who is now standing with his feet on the floor and his eyes wide open. Rose wishes she had his ability to disappear at will.  
  
"Mom, no-"  
  
"It takes some kinda boy, I'm sorry, man to walk a lady home this far from town. Come in for dinner." Ms. Lalonde gives him a wink and a pat on the shoulder and zips back inside before anyone can protest. Oddly enough, Rose finds herself resenting the touch more than the insinuation.  
  
It's only after that sinks in that she remembers to storm inside. The glass vials in her bag prevent her from unceremoniously shrugging it off in the entrance hall, but once she's set it down her knife and jacket quickly follow and she trips into the kitchen without waiting for John.  
  
"Mother, he's not--"  
  
Her mom laughs before she even finishes. "I know, I was just teasing. What happened?"  
  
"...I tried to summon something and got him instead."  
  
"Spell went wrong?" Rose says nothing. "Well don't say I didn't warn you about summoning things. But I guessed as much. I didn't think you'd be after something so human. Or cheery. Or good-looking."  
  
Rose narrows her eyes and turns to leave, but nearly runs into John, who has been hovering behind her for... oh god, was he listening to that? She tries to ignore her face heating up and slips past him down the hall.  
  
"Come here, John."  
  
For a moment he floats helplessly in the doorway, but whatever Rose's mother says or gestures to him makes his expression contort into something between confused and embarrassed and he promptly trails behind Rose to the living room.  
  
"She doesn't seem so bad," he says, but Rose ignores him.  
  
"Something's not right here."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"She smells like... like nothing."  
  
John watches her pace in front of the couch. "O...kay?"  
  
"Usually she's at least buzzed by this time of night."  
  
"Don't tell me those liquids we went to pick up were-"  
  
"No, I'm fairly certain she distills most of her own alcohol somewhere around here. Maybe another benefit of living away from town. The liquids are for her work, and I'd like to believe  _only_ for her work, though I do sometimes wonder."  
  
Rose pauses at the end of the couch. Apparently her mom guessed what she had been up to. Did Roxy know John was here when she sent them out in the morning? Did she plan to have dinner with them when they came home? Is that why she's sobered up? To meet him?  
  
"Hey, so." John breaks her concentration and Rose turns her head to where he's still floating at the edge of the room. "Does this mean I can stay for dinner? If I'm going to be your familiar I'll probably be around here a lot, so it might be nice to know her!"  
  
The sound of Roxy humming in the kitchen floats into the room as Rose thinks and then reluctantly agrees. There's no point in kicking him out now, is there? The damage has already been done.  
  
So she thought.  
  
Rose is fairly certain the ensuing meal is the most awkward night of her life; the only thing worse than having to re-imagine the rest of her life to include this strange boy-spirit is having to introduce him to her mother.  
  
But no, every passing half hour is a new level of mortification: they seem to hit it off well, she laughing at all his jokes and answering his questions coyly and being generally charming (the way Rose wasn't) and he, well, drinking it all in, leaning his elbows on the table where his plate would be if he ate. She even offers him a sip of her martini once she's a tad tipsy, and he declines, and it's only further impetus for her to lean over to Rose and wink and say, "Now heeere's a boy wiz a good head on 'is shoulders, I think ya should keep 'im!"  
  
_If I had any other options, Mother_ , Rose thinks, and it takes all her willpower to refrain from acting more than moderately sullen in her general direction. She focuses on thanking whatever gods, be they in the void or John's territory, that she never dated long or openly enough to bring a partner home to meet her family.  
  
The moment she sees a chance to escape, she drags John off to the observatory. (Her room would be more comfortable, but at the tail end of that train wreck of a conversation she's not risking any further embarrassing comments.) It's well enough, she supposes; most of her magic materials are here anyway, if still fairly disorganized, and magic is what she intends to talk about tonight.  
  
Except that John has other ideas.  
  
"Come on, you spent all of last night asking me things. It's a two-way pact, you know! You're still a total stranger to me. Just let me get to know you a little before we start doing spells."  
  
"Fine," Rose concedes, leaning back against the wall and pulling a box next to her to sift through its contents. "Ask me questions. But help me sort my supplies while you do it."  
  
John floats down until he's sitting on the ground, cross-legged, and rests his hands on his knees.  
  
"Well?" Rose asks when he continues to fail to say anything. "Some of us aren't going to live forever, you know."  
  
"I'm thinking, hold on! Okay, how about you just introduce yourself to me?"  
  
Rose barely looks up from the bowls she's stacking by size. "Introduce myself. For the second time."  
  
"Yeah! Just. Tell me about yourself. I want to know what you think is important about you and then I'll ask you things."  
  
The bowls clink as she carefully places them back into the box. "You mean you can't think of anything to ask and need a starting point."  
  
"Shut up."  
  
But try as she might, Rose can't think of any reason he shouldn't get his turn to hear her speak, so she sighs and begins.


	6. Chapter 6

Her name is Rose Lalonde and he is moderately fascinated.  
  
He knew her name already, of course! But he didn't know any of the other things she chose to tell him right after she shook his hand and introduced herself in the most facetiously formal and stilted way she could manage. Like that she enjoys writing, has always had an interest in creatures and powers of a rather shady nature, and studied the workings of the human mind before she gravitated toward sorcery.  
  
Her studies haven't qualified her to make an occupation of it, though, and in order for her to immerse herself in the field she'd have to move somewhere a little more populated. The idea doesn't appeal to her much right now, she says as she sorts her remaining candles by height. John remarks that it's kind of funny how she likes studying people when she doesn't seem to like people much, and that's about the point that she changes the subject.  
  
Most children her age would be preparing to embark on a certain occupational journey, Rose tells him, either as an apprentice or by studying a subject more in depth than general school allows for. (As an aside she mentions that some women marry at her age instead, but the tone of voice in which she says it rings of distaste.) She's done with her schooling, partially completed through the village schoolhouse and partially with the aid of the occasional private tutor and a lot of books, and has had no need to rush straight into employment because her family is monetarily pretty well off at the moment, leaving her with time to try her hand at new subjects such as magic. But she admits as well that until fairly recently she's been more interested in reading about it and trying to understand how it works than actually practicing it.   
  
John flips through one of the old books stacked against the wall and asks her where she gets them. There didn't seem to be much evidence of witches in town, after all. She tells him about an old friend of hers (so she _does_ have friends), a huntress only a little older than herself who roams the country with her dog. Apparently her grandfather was acquainted with Ms. Lalonde, and though the huntress shared Roxy's interest in the sciences, she became faster friends with the girl closer to her own age.  
  
"And now she's your illegal sorcery book dealer," John finishes, stretched out above the floor with his head propped on one elbow.   
  
Rose pulls a ceramic bowl back out from the stack and sets it in front of her. "She has no qualms with the idea of witchcraft and brings me whatever books and tidbits of information she may have picked up since her last visit." A small tangle of yarn joins the bowl. "I haven't seen her in half a year or so. She stops by only when she's in the area, and it's not uncommon for her to get caught up in adventures far away."  
  
"So you've only got what she brings you?"  
  
"And what little I can find on my own. Luckily most magic is concerned more with the properties of the equipment than the equipment itself. I've made do."  
  
"Which explains all this stuff up here." John pokes at the recently-organized pile of household-items-turned-sorcery-supplies. "So do you have a magic wand or something?"  
  
"Well... no, I've been unable to acquire one. But as I said, my studies have led me to believe that the material is less important than the shape, in this case, which acts as something of a conduit for the concentration of energy. So I've been using knitting needles."  
  
"Knitting needles?"  
  
Rose shrugs. "I had extras."  
  
Once she's recovered the "wands" from the pile, they get down to business. Rose has John put the candles out with the wind so she can relight them without moving from her spot. He watches the flames flicker and asks if she's ever considered casting light without the candles, and, at the funny look she gives him, explains that she could create a ball of fire or something like that in front of her.  
  
"In midair?" she asks, replacing a candle that's starting to tip over. A fair amount of wax has collected in the little brass dishes holding them; she must do this a lot.  
  
"Yeah! Just have it float beside you. It'd be a lot more efficient than having to carry candles or matches around."  
  
"Ah. Levitation. I'll admit I've tried something similar before, but it's a difficult technique to master. I suspect it will be right up your alley, though, so perhaps we can try it later."  
  
She goes on to show him how she can create tiny waves in a dish of water by moving her fingers above it, and generate a spark of energy at the end of her needle - not enough to really hurt, but enough to shock. The stretch of purple yarn she changes to red, and to yellow, and through the full color spectrum back to purple.  
  
"So is that it?" John says when she's finished.  
  
"Yes. I'm afraid it must seem a paltry set of tricks compared to the arsenal of experienced witches, but-"  
  
"No, it's a good start! You're young, after all, and don't have a mentor, and it sounds like you're learning fast! A lot of people can't do magic at all, you know."  
  
"Can't, or won't?"  
  
He falters. "Well..."  
  
"Either way." Rose stands to open a window, and tosses the water from the bowl out into the night. "In any case, this is what we have to work with. I'm familiar with a number of other magical concepts, as well, but either haven't tried or haven't successfully performed them. I'd like to believe your presence will make it easier for me to pick them up."  
  
"I would like to believe that too!"  
  
For a moment she stands thinking, and John begins to wonder exactly what she expects of him. He can't do much magic himself, and what he can do he's never had to think too hard about. But he does have a pretty good grasp on how it works in general, and that seems to be more what she's interested in anyway?  
  
"There is one thing I neglected to mention," she says, causing him to look up at her as she turns to leave. "It's less important for our purposes, but you can come see if you want. I'm going outside."  
  
He does, in fact, follow her downstairs and into the back yard. There's a small pit in the ground not too far from the house, slightly charred he thinks, and Rose kneels next to it.  
  
"I've been studying scrying," she explains as she gathers a few small twigs and leaves in the indent, "but I believe I have it down well enough not to require your assistance."  
  
A small flame bursts to life with a snap of her fingers. As she fuels it with a larger stick, John says, "Oh, using the smoke from the fire?"  
  
"Among other things. It depends on the purpose. Some methods are more conducive to certain signs."  
  
"So what's your goal with the smoke?"  
  
She glances up at him as the fire grows; he gives it a little nudge with the wind, fanning the flames.   
  
"General consultation. Just some direction for the future weeks."  
  
John watches her for a minute, her face illuminated by little more than the firelight, and then sits down. "But you don't expect it to give you a solid answer, do you? Like, you're not just going to do whatever you see because you saw it?"  
  
"I can't say for certain." By now Rose is watching the smoke closely, but she tilts her head the slightest bit to turn her eyes to him. "Why? What are you implying?"  
  
"Oh, I'm just saying, you don't want to come to rely on things like that _too_ much..."  
  
"They don't work?"  
  
"They're just not... infallible. Sometimes they're okay! Maybe most of the time. But trust me, if you start letting omens control you you're still not guaranteed anything. Stuff changes sometimes! And it's not worth giving up the present to become a slave to a possible future. At least, I don't think so."  
  
Rose looks at him for a long moment.   
  
"I've seen things, okay. You know, like. The crazy witches."  
  
She shakes her head and turns back to the fire. "No, I agree with you. I believe that when I look to the future what I see is only one path. There are other possibilities. But I'm not aiming for a map to follow, I'm simply looking for signs."  
  
John doesn't respond and for a few minutes the only sounds are the crackling of the fire and faint forest noises from across the lawn. Rose is focusing pretty hard, so John silently watches her, and the trees, and the fire, and her again, and the smoke disappearing into the sky.  
  
Eventually she says, without looking away from her task, "You don't need to stay if you don't want to. I don't believe we have anything else to do for the night."  
  
"Oh, okay, I'll just..." John floats up a few halting feet. She didn't say he should leave, but he gets the feeling she's not eager to share the results of her divination with him anyway. If all she's going to do is play with fire and then go to bed, he might as well go, right? There's plenty of better things he could be doing than sitting here staring at her.  
  
"Call me when you need me tomorrow, okay?" he says. Rose only hums her acknowledgement, and when John disappears she's still gazing into the smoke, violet eyes fixed on some sign he can't see.


	7. Chapter 7

Something of a routine sets in after that. In the morning Rose dresses and eats before she bothers to summon John to her, and they retire to the observatory, or her room, or outside to work on magic.  
  
Rose references books from her shelves, talking John through her thought processes regarding the more challenging spells (when she can get him to sit and listen). Their conversations get sidetracked more than a few times, but once Rose puts her mind to something, she picks it up fast. She tries shooting the spark of energy off the end of her wand, and with John's tips about what hand motions to use, by mid-afternoon of the next day she's blasting tiny holes in leaves on the ground.   
  
The day after that they fill another bowl with water, and in a few hours Rose can splash it over the side by moving her hand. She tries to control it more precisely, make the motion more elegant, but she's unable to guide the water the way she sees John easily manipulating the wind. He tries to tell her that liquids are heavier and that makes them tougher to move, but she argues that air is less solid and should be more difficult to get a handle on. Either way, John can form the water into a tiny funnel and Rose can't. Eventually enough of it ends up puddled on the floor that the water level in the bowl is too low for Rose to make it reach the lip anymore, and they give up (for now).  
  
Over lunch he tells her about his nightly escapades - exploring the forest, sailing over the river and nearby farmlands, branching out into the foothills of the mountains when he has time. He mentions that he's flown to town and back and it's markedly shorter by air, even following the path through the woods rather than going straight there. The report is followed by a pointed stare. Rose ignores it.  
  
If her magical studies were enthralling before, now they completely consume her time; she has so much left to learn, and it feels more... promising, somehow, with an actual spirit at her side, even if that spirit can be a little over-excitable and childish for her tastes. Most of Rose's waking hours she now spends in John's company. She never sees him at night, but his stories of what he does while he's gone are enough to convince her that he truly does leave when she dismisses him. (It's not as if she was  _expecting_  him to intrude upon her privacy, but he is, well, a tad lacking in certain forms of awareness. It wouldn't surprise her if he simply didn't know that hanging out in people's houses while they sleep might make them uncomfortable.) He still leaves for dinner too, fortunately; Roxy hasn't insisted on inviting him back yet, though Rose is certain her mother is very aware of his presence in their home.  
  
So an unofficial schedule develops, days pass, and one early afternoon finds John and Rose outside in somewhat blustery weather discussing what John said about making the fire float. He hangs unnaturally in the air, unmoved by the gusts even while pine needles and stray leaves cascade to the ground around him.   
  
"You said you've looked at levitation spells?" he asks.   
  
No matter how many times Rose brushes her hair from her face, bursts of wind manage to tug it out from behind her ear. She sets her wands down to adjust her headband again.  
  
"Yes, but they're quite a bit more difficult than what we've been doing. Levitation is nothing less than counteracting gravity itself."  
  
"Maybe I can help with that though? I counteract gravity all the time! And you said yourself, air and floating and stuff are kind of my deal."  
  
"I'm not certain it's within my skill range, but I imagine if there were a spirit to help with levitation, it would be your kind. Speaking of which," Rose adds, turning slightly so the breeze is at her back instead of in her face, "can't you do something about this wind? It's obnoxious."  
  
John sails in lazy figures above her. "What, no, it's cool. And it's not even that bad."  
  
"I'll admit I've seen far worse, but it's not really conducive to what we're trying to do here. A distraction at the least and a safety hazard at worst."  
  
"Heh, well..." John looks a little sheepish as he slows to a stop in front of her. "The thing is... I can't actually control the weather as well from down here? It's kind of strange, I had pretty much complete command of it from above, but now I can only exaggerate or moderate it. Weird, huh?"  
  
Rose raises an eyebrow and says nothing.  
  
"It's not like I'm powerless! Far from it. See, watch." He moves one arm in what strikes Rose as a completely arbitrary motion and the wind dies down to a gentle breeze. "I just can't  _stop_  it, or at least not for more than a few seconds."  
  
"They gave me a weather god who can't control the weather."  
  
"Hey, I can mostly control it! But I mean, imagine if I commanded the weather completely and you commanded me. You could like, flood the village, or cause a decade-long drought and kill everyone, or strike someone with lightning. Actually, you might still be able to strike someone with lightning, I haven't tried that."  
  
"Please don't. The last thing I need is a wildfire." Rose crosses her arms and taps her fingers against her side. "So the powers that be have seen fit to moderate your abilities, perhaps for the purpose of moderating mine."  
  
"World domination via snowing everyone into their houses is out. Cross that from your list."  
  
"Rats. There go my plans for the afternoon."  
  
"So do you still want to try this levitation thing?" John fixes his gaze on a nearby fallen branch about the size of his arm; as his eyes move up, it begins to float, wavering slightly. As soon as he turns away the wind disperses and the stick clatters back to the ground.  
  
Rose frowns. Show-off.  
  
"I don't expect to master it with so little experience under my belt... but I suppose in the meantime there's nothing wrong with working up to it."  
  
"I know how you can do that!" John swoops low to the ground to grab the stick and twirls it in midair. When he tosses it aside, it hovers motionless instead of falling back down.  
  
Rose reaches out to poke it, slowly, as if it might spring back to life at any moment. "Do tell."  
  
"You'll have a better understanding of what you're working with if you have a better understanding of the air itself, and how things move in it." John watches as Rose wraps a hand around the stick. It's weightless, held up by something invisible, and yet not rooted in one spot. "And what better way to learn how to make things float than to float yourself?"  
  
She doesn't have to meet his eyes to know he's looking at her expectantly. "You want me to fly."  
  
"I told you, it's awesome!"  
  
All at once the weight comes back into the stick and it nearly drops to the ground before Rose tightens her grip and catches it. She taps it lightly against her leg and considers.  
  
"I suppose that  _would_  be a decent way to learn. It is my impression, after all, that gaining a conceptual understanding of anything magical is the first and most important step towards being able to perform spells."  
  
From somewhere above her he asks eagerly, "Is that a yes? You'll let me show you the sky?"  
  
Rose draws in a deep breath and exhales slowly. She'd be lying if she said the idea of defying gravity wasn't appealing, but she's less sure about the method. Is she supposed to put her life in his hands? At this point she doubts he'll try to kill her, but accidents (and "accidents") do happen. Still, she'll have to do it sooner or later. For the sake of her sorcery...  
  
"I suppose it is. Let's go," she says, and tosses the stick a few feet away-  
  
-and then the ground is falling out from under her and the wind is blowing her hair out of her face and there is nothing to hold onto, nothing but the hands under her arms.  
  
"What the hell, John!" She kicks out, grasping for something solid, and they lurch closer to the ground and that's  _not_  what she wanted to happen they're going to crash-  
  
"Hold still!" John yells back, and the descent becomes a little more gradual, and still unable to slow Rose's frantically beating heart. When her feet touch the grass by the riverbank she stumbles forward and his arms, still under her shoulders, are the only things to steady her.  
  
Until she wrenches away and turns on him, swaying on her feet and clenching her fists because shaking hands aren't menacing at all. "You could have  _killed_  me, John-"  
  
"You wouldn't have been in any danger if you hadn’t started squirming like a cat above a bathtub!" John crosses his arms over his chest. "You think I don't know how to fly? I'm a sky spirit Rose, you keep forgetting that I'm the powerful one here!"  
  
Rose's expression darkens as her fingernails bite into her palms. "That power means  _nothing_  if you don't know how to handle it appropriately."  
  
"Wh..." John's face is caught between disbelief and indignation. "And you do? You are so full of it sometimes! You don't need to treat me like a kid."  
  
_This is not the time to get into unaired grievances_ , Rose thinks,  _don't take the bait, don't_ \- but she can't help rolling her eyes, and the words just follow. "Perhaps I wouldn't if you wouldn't  _act_  like one, oh great and powerful sky spirit. You are extremely impatient and your lack of basic sense is a little alarming. Did it occur to you that I might have liked some  _warning_?"  
  
His eyes turn to the ground, but he looks no less petulant. "You said you wanted to fly."  
  
"Yes, and I meant  _fly_ , not  _suddenly be dangled dozens of feet above the ground_."  
  
"You still don't trust me at all, do you."  
  
_What?_  "That is so not the issue here, John-" But that's it, he vanishes into the wind and Rose is left snapping at empty air. She takes a deep breath and rubs her temple. It's probably for the best; he wouldn't listen to her anyway.   
  
John's stunt has left her farther from her house than she'd wished to be, but still within easy sight. As she turns to head back along the river she focuses on not grinding her teeth. Find something else to think about - best to cool down before he comes back. He has to come back eventually. She wonders if it's really some sort of requirement that a familiar can't leave his witch unless he's given an explicit order. What compels him to return? Will he be punished if he doesn't? For all her success ( _if you could call it that_ , she thinks) in binding him to her, she knows she doesn't have the power to make him do anything he doesn't want to. She nearly steps on her forgotten wands in the yard, and as she bends to pick them up she grimly considers that she will probably  _never_  have the power to make him do anything he doesn't want to.  
  
Or maybe he'll come back just because he knows it's the right thing to do. Guilt begins to creep into Rose's mind as she climbs the steps of the front porch. If there's anything she's gathered about John in the past week, it's that he may be naïve and a bit thoughtless at times, but he does usually mean well. He just wanted to show her something he's excited about. So what if his enthusiasm was a little childish; he didn't have to offer at all.  
  
A distant rumble disturbs her thoughts and she looks out above the trees. Darker clouds are gathering and the wind is picking up again. A sinking feeling makes her feel heavy and tired and roots her to the spot, despite the chill.  
  
He may not be what she originally wanted, but couldn't she have tried a little harder to be patient with him? John is no impenetrable, all-knowing deity meant to guide her to success in the witching world. He's no otherworldly animal, removed from humanity far enough not to feel emotion. He's not her pet and he's not her servant. He is, for all intents and purposes, a person just like her.  
  
Is she really this bad at dealing with people?  
  
A few scattered raindrops blow under the eaves, sprinkling both the porch and Rose's skirt with droplets. She takes one more look at the oncoming storm and reluctantly drags herself inside.


	8. Chapter 8

The sound of rain beating against the windowpanes and pounding on the roof is Rose's only accompaniment for the afternoon. John, unsurprisingly, does not return soon, and her mother, unsurprisingly, is nowhere to be seen in the house proper. Rose watches the wind shake the tree branches outside the kitchen window and contemplates how long it's been since the last time she was thoroughly alone. A week, maybe? What did she used to do when she was home by herself all day?  
  
A cursory glance through the bookshelves in the study reveals no answers. She's read all of these old volumes at least once, in between and around texts for her formal schooling. All her newer reads, books recently acquired or stiff from laying unused in trunks for years, are in the observatory, but something pushes Rose away from that staircase. She goes instead to her room.  
  
Nearly shoved under her bed she finds a barely-familiar notebook, filled with prose that abruptly ends halfway through a page. From the dust beginning to coat the cover, she can guess at how long it's been since she's written anything more than scraps of story on loose pages. Had she really gotten that obsessive about learning sorcery? She barely remembers some of these passages.  
  
Writing absorbs her focus and she's lost track of the time, nearly forgotten about the argument, when a breeze tugs the corners of the papers. She glances at the window - closed, of course, and the rain is beginning to let up, but still coming down.   
  
John stands in the middle of the room, water dripping from his hair and his clothes. "Hi," he says flatly, avoiding Rose's eyes.  
  
"Hello."  
  
For a moment neither says anything. Rose thinks, too late, that she should have prepared for this, decided what to say in advance, but instead she put it out of her thoughts and now she's at a loss. Possibilities flash through her mind, but before she can vocalize one John speaks again.  
  
"Hey, so um... sorry about picking you up like that. I guess as your familiar I'm not supposed to do anything unless you ask me to, so..."  
  
She hadn't factored that into her calculations. "What? No, of course you can do things that I don't explicitly order you to do. In fact, I'd prefer it."  
  
He looks up almost surprised, and Rose wonders if he had really gotten it into his head that he had to give up all semblance of free will. Didn't he himself say humans can't control spirits like that?  
  
She swallows and continues, "I don't want a mindless servant as a familiar, John. Given the circumstances, I think I'd rather have a friend."  
  
The words are far too saccharine and trite for Rose's taste, and she almost wishes she could erase them like she does her worse lines of dialogue in her journal, but then he smiles and okay, maybe it was worth it.  
  
"That said, as a friend I'd also prefer that you think before you hoist me into the air without warning."  
  
"Yeah, uh, you were right and I shouldn't have done that. It was stupid. I'm stupid." John rubs his arm. There's genuine guilt in his expression and Rose frowns because she didn't mean to make him feel this bad, not really, but before she can figure out what to say he goes on. "It's just, sometimes I forget that the groundbound must be kind of terrified of not having anything to hold onto, and..."  
  
"Well, maybe you'll remember better now." She pauses before adding, "And I believe I owe you an apology as well, for some of the things I said. To be honest, you're right; I was simply scared, and I took it out on you."  
  
"Hehe, Rose Lalonde gets scared of things? No way." John's teasing grin returns, even if it doesn't reach his eyes, and Rose decides she can withstand a few shots at her expense if it'll get him to stop moping.  
  
"I know, who would have thought. It's one of my most carefully-kept secrets and I must insist you guard it with your life."  
  
"I  _suppose_  I can do that, since you are my master. Or. Friend, I guess." He looks at her, honestly questioning.  
  
Rose gives him a smile that she hopes is reassuring. "Of course we can be friends, John. With the caveat that we both respect some personal boundaries that include not abruptly kidnapping anyone into the sky."  
  
"Pft, 'both,' okay. I think we  _both_  know who that's directed at," John says, and vaporizes only to reappear right next to her. "So what are you working on?"  
  
Immediately one of Rose's hands reaches up to shut the notebook - trained well by her mother's frequent interruptions when she was younger - but she stays it, settling instead for examining his face as his eyes roam over the page.  
  
"Just writing."  
  
"Yeah? What about?"  
  
"Mostly magic, I suppose. But of a somewhat more fantastic variety. Unbounded by obnoxious and arbitrary rules except where plot dictates them necessary."  
  
"Heh, we wish. Can I read it?"  
  
Rose pauses. She's not sure he understood that those "personal boundaries" extend beyond the physical, but then again, maybe this isn't the time to push him away like she does her mother. He does seem genuinely curious, and, well, he probably hasn't read a book in centuries, so it's not as if he's going to judge her, right? Besides, she can't keep him out of her personal life forever.  
  
(Except she can, she thinks, but does she want to. There's the question of the day.)  
  
Her tongue can't seem to settle on an answer, so she takes the easy way out. "I didn't know you could read. I was under the impression that there's no need for books in the sky realm."  
  
"There isn't," John says, leaning against the desk and dragging his gaze away from the notebook. Rose's fingers still itch to close it (what's the point? He's already seen this page) and he's still standing a little bit too close, forcing her to look up at him. "It's just one of those things."  
  
"Ah. I understand completely now."  
  
"You know, just... a thing we pick up. I speak too, don't I? There's no need to speak up there, either."  
  
"I suppose I can accept that."  
  
They fall quiet again, this pause somehow more awkward than the last. Maybe Rose made a mistake in inviting him to be friends. What does that mean, really? Rose doesn't have extensive experience with friendship. More importantly, what does  _he_  think it means? She can only imagine him as exuberant and silly about it (a terrible contrast to how he looks now, dripping on the edge of her desk; she'd almost prefer overexcited and childish to this). If they can't keep up a conversation then maybe they're not suited for anything more than business, maybe she should have kept him at arm's length-  
  
Once again John is the one to break the silence. "So, uh. Do you want to work on some other spells? Preferably ones we can do inside, until the weather lets up. I don't really wanna mess with it now..."  
  
Rose watches him push away from the desk and float into the middle of the room aimlessly, like a boat drifting away from its dock. Maybe her doubts are what's silly. She's barely known him a week, after all, and he has plenty of positive traits she could be focusing on, rather than worrying about what bothers her.  
  
She shuts her journal and stands up. "It wouldn't hurt to continue looking into making solid objects move horizontally. Let's put off the levitation part for a little while, shall we? It still would be exceedingly practical to have the power to move objects to me, even across the floor. I wouldn't have to get up to fetch more yarn."  
  
"Heh." A stray yarn ball in the corner of the room dislodges from its place and rolls to Rose's feet, seemingly of its own accord. She looks from it to John, and he smiles. "Yeah, we can do that."  
  
"Excellent."  
  
In any case, she decides, they won't know until they try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the kudos and comments! as with the original thread, I might not reply much, but I wanted to say I do read and appreciate them, so feel free to keep sharing your thoughts!


	9. Chapter 9

Gradually the drizzly, breezy days of spring become warm, clear afternoons, and as the weather improves so do Rose's feelings about her situation. John is a little more subdued, though his excitement and brashness tend to slip through at times; Rose tries to be patient with his lack of tact and act friendlier towards him, which comes surprisingly easy at times. It's not perfect, and she's certain he finds fault with her as much as she does with him, but the knowledge that the pact is permanent lingers in the back of her mind, and the hours they spend laughing rather than simply tolerating each other convinces Rose that they can make it work, one way or another.  
  
She comes to think that it may not be John's presence itself that helps her so much as having someone to bounce ideas off, someone who looks at things from a completely different perspective and forces her to think in new ways. He points out that moving water and moving solid objects (and moving the wind!) really aren't all that different, and when she tries to shift the yarn ball the same way she shifts water she has much more success (even if its path ends up a little wavy).  
  
For a week or two they spend most of every day practicing, and while Rose hardly sees it as "work," she picks up on some amount of restlessness from John. He says he's happy to help her, but at the same time he seems almost more excited about his nightly explorations than his days sitting around her house. So Rose picks a bright morning that promises some heat later on, leaves all her magic paraphernalia at home, and leads John down to the river for a day off.  
  
The pace of the water isn't slow, but it's not rapid enough to keep Rose from walking right up to the edge without fear. It's a short drop to the surface, a foot or two of solid dirt wall or sloping mud, and rocks and rushes break the flow near the bank. For a little while they simply walk upstream, John flying above the ground while Rose toes the edge of the river. They've been here before, of course, but never to stay long, and usually without a lot of attention to spare for the scenery itself.  
  
When they come to a particularly grassy spot, mostly dry, where the water rises close to the bank, Rose stops to sit down. It's already moderately warm, at least enough for her to pull off her shoes and socks and stick her feet in the current. When she drapes her legs over the edge the water reaches halfway up her calf. Immediately she tenses; it's still rather cold, but she steels herself and wiggles her toes.  
  
"Why would you want to do that," John says, and Rose looks up. He's floating next to her, a few paces farther from the water and eyeing it as if he expects a wave to leap out of the riverbed and attack him.  
  
"Because I like water. It's refreshing."  
  
"Isn't it cold?"  
  
"Yes, but that's part of what makes it refreshing. Come a little closer, it won't bite."  
  
John snorts indignantly, but inches a little closer to the bank. When he sits down he draws his feet up close to him, just a tad too defensive to look casual.  
  
"You act as if water is a threat to you. Are you offended by the other elements? I thought the natural predator of air would be earth."  
  
He sniffs again and crosses his arms. "I'm not afraid of it. I just don't like it."  
  
A smile spreads across Rose's face as she studies him. "Honestly, right now you look like the perfect human embodiment of my old cat. He was well-behaved enough most of the time, gentle even, but when it came to bathing him never could a more recalcitrant house pet be found. Will you scratch me if I push you in?"  
  
"Yes. I will claw your eyes out." Rose grins wider and John narrows his eyes. "Don't try me, Rose."  
  
She leans back, propping herself up on her palms. "Please. You can fly, John. Of all people you should be the least worried about accidentally falling in."  
  
"I'm not worried, I'm just. Reasonably careful. Once it gets you it sucks you in, you know."  
  
"I see." Rose kicks up a foot, watching drops of water splash farther out in the river. "You don't like it because there's not enough air. You don't have any control underwater."  
  
"It's not that I don't have _any_ control! Just... not as much. It's weird and dark and heavy when you're under it."  
  
Rose thinks back to the times she went swimming as a child, the pull of the undercurrent and dim light on the riverbed. It's certainly not as if the river was always kind to her; more than once she had to fight to avoid being swept away, days she foolishly snuck out without supervision to prove some point or another. But for the most part she remembers the water to be buoyant, graceful, freeing almost. Perhaps if she could float in the air the way she floats in water, like John can, she'd feel the same about its greater density.  
  
She reaches forward to dangle her fingers in the current. "I take it you detest being underground as well?"  
  
Slowly John lets his knees come apart so he's sitting cross-legged. "It's not really bad if it's like, tunnels." Leaning over to look into the water, he floats forward a little. "The air gets stale and uncomfortable, and it's dark and feels like it's pressing in on you, but there still is air. As long as you're not buried in earth or something. That would be terrible."  
  
"Few things worse for a wind spirit than tight, claustrophobic spaces."  
  
"Exactly!"  
  
Despite the conversation John seems pretty interested in watching the water tug at the reeds. He's as much over the water as the ground now, though still barely within arm's reach, and Rose considers. If she were to attempt to push him in would he just drift forward, like a toy boat in a bathtub? She imagines that he's more likely to spring up than fall down; someone like him could give a more literal meaning to the exaggeration of jumping ten feet in surprise. He'll always default to suspending himself in midair if he's not concentrating on pretending to obey the laws of gravity. It's a hypothesis she might like to test - for science, of course, but also perhaps as payback for the way he's starting to enjoy sneaking up on her...  
  
Nah. Not worth it. She'd like to keep her eyes, after all.  
  
Instead she smiles at how fascinated he looks. For a moment his eyes flick over to her, and he straightens his back and floats out a little farther, turning up his nose. "See, I'm not afraid of your water."  
  
"Good. Then when mid-summer hits and it's too hot to run around, you won't have any objections to going swimming with me where the current is slow."  
  
"That's not what I said."  
  
"Oh, don't tell me you don't know how to swim, either? No matter, I'll teach you. I'm sure you'll pick it up as quickly as you learned to walk, mister god."  
  
"That's not funny."  
  
As he inches forward, his hood, resting on the bank, unravels farther, and Rose watches the tip finally slide away from the ground. John doesn't notice when it touches the surface of the water, but the current tugs on it and - sure enough, as soon as he feels it he shoots straight up into the air and stays there.  
  
"That's not  _funny_!" he says again, glaring at the hand that covers her mouth and fails to hide her chuckles. "You know what, this is stupid. Let's just go back to working on magic or something. I'll come out here and explore sometime when the peanut gallery is too asleep to make fun of me."  
  
"Well, if you insist." Rose pulls her feet out of the water and shakes them off as John drifts back over the bank, refusing to come down. "Perhaps you should choose the location of our next field trip."  
  
"It won't be the river."  
  
"And it won't be the sky."  
  
"You've left me with so many choices," John grumbles.  
  
Rose picks up her shoes and socks and heads barefoot back downstream. "Well, we should be fine in the woods, unless snagging your hood on tree branches startles you as much as moving water does."  
  
"You're hilarious. I'm going to get you back, you know."  
  
Rose just smiles.


	10. Chapter 10

John is happy to find that as the weather gets warmer they start to spend more time outside, sitting in the backyard or on the front porch to conduct Rose's studies. Even in the evenings, they can mill around in the observatory with the windows open and no lanterns or candles lit, thanks to the days getting longer. The fresh air from outside is a new temptation every night, making him excited to get back to his explorations.  
  
Except he's running out of places to explore, now, at least those accessible within a single night when those nights are getting shorter. He's mentally mapped out the area around Rose's house: the forest nearly surrounding it, the path to the town further downriver, the fields that gradually slope into foothills behind the house, the stream and the woods beyond it. Seeing the landscape has been fun, but, well, it's made him start to wonder what else there is to do.  
  
It's not that hanging out with Rose is boring! She's been working on a variety of spells, and it's interesting to watch her, and he's glad he can help her sometimes. But it's kind of getting repetitive? He knows now that she does have a sense of humor and she's fun to talk to, but she's a little... serious, much of the time, and sort of... hard to read.  
  
She got frustrated, once, trying to make the end of a piece of yarn float, and he got frustrated trying to show her how when she didn't seem to be heeding his advice at all. Eventually she snapped at him to stop, told him that just because he was fortunate enough to be a spirit didn't mean he was entitled to be an ass, and he yelled back something about how if  _he_  wasn't entitled to it trying to teach someone as stubbornly pretentious as herself then why was  _she_?  
  
In retrospect he supposes he kind of lost his head; he remembers her barely flinching, hardly raising her voice. But she's so cold. She makes him look hotheaded, even when he's not that angry.  
  
Another day he snuck her wands away during the night and hid them in the kitchen. She spent at least fifteen minutes searching for them before he nudged them a little more into the open. The moment she found them, she simply shot him a narrow-eyed glance and walked away.  
  
It was funny, he thought - not quite devious enough to be the promised retaliation for the river, but amusing all the same. But she didn't even smile. When he asked if she was mad, she said no without even looking at him. He may not be entirely familiar with human behavior yet, but something about that felt wrong.  
  
Still, she didn't start acting any differently around him, so no harm done, right?  
  
But even though they seem generally on better terms than they were for the first week or so, John can't help but feel like he's not really living  _with_  her. They've become closer, yeah, but there's something about the way she never says what she's thinking that makes him feel like they're always at arm's length. He supposes he doesn't really know what the human emotion called friendship is supposed to feel like - it's not like this big empty house offers any examples - but after considering what little he's seen before, and snippets of books from Rose's library, he's not certain they're doing it right.  
  
He doesn't want to mention it, though. She'd probably think he was being stupid. Wouldn't she? He can never really tell with her.  
  
So as aggravating as she can be when she's bossing him around, it's kind of a nice day when she says exactly what's on her mind. Like today.  
  
"As beneficial as practice around the house is, I think it's time we moved to another environment." She kneels down by the back door to tie her shoes. "Repetition may be key to learning the basic concepts but I'm sure some broader experience is necessary for full mastery."  
  
"Okay," John says, looking out the window at a patch of shadow moving across the trees. It's not very windy where they are, but a higher breeze has been pushing clouds past the sun all morning, making the light dim and grow intermittently. "What does that mean?"  
  
"It means," Rose says as she stands up, "we're going to do some field work. Forest work, rather. Moving water in a bowl is a nice party trick, but coaxing water from the ground is a survival skill. Let's take what we've been working on and apply it to something a little less domestic."  
  
She tucks her wands into her makeshift belt and steps outside. John follows, curious.   
  
"This isn't going to count as my 'vacation day' just because we're going to the forest, is it?" He's been thinking about how to  _really_  get back at her for the river - something to surprise her, of course, make her jump the way he did. She won't find it so funny when she's the butt of the joke. His first thought was a bucket of water over the door to her room, but the way things have been lately, he's a little hesitant to do anything that might provoke another outburst like the day they (almost) went flying. Given the wand stunt, she doesn't seem to like jokes much, and the prank won't be funny if she just gets mad.  
  
Rose shakes her head, leading him through the grassy yard and into the trees. Usually when they practice outside she doesn't stray too far in, always within sight of the house, but this time she doesn't stop and soon they're surrounded by thick trunks and dense undergrowth.  
  
John still isn't thrilled with the woods, but he's been getting used to them at Rose's insistence, and now he floats along behind her, deftly maneuvering between the trees. It's a fairly warm day, so it's not too cool even under the copious leaves overhead.   
  
After a while, he says, "So... do you come out here much? Or did you, when you were younger?"  
  
Rose steps carefully over a bumpy tree root that he hadn't even noticed. With his hood coiled around one arm, only the tip free for him to twirl idly, he doesn't have to worry much about getting his clothes snagged in bushes or tripping on rocks.  
  
"A fair bit, I suppose. It's a nice atmosphere for writing, or simply thinking for a while, but I generally preferred the river. Of course Mother insisted that it was dangerous to stray too far into the woods, but while I'm certain this forest has its share of bears and cougars waiting for young girls to gobble up, she was rarely concerned enough to supervise or stop me."  
  
She pauses next to a patch of flowers sprouting at the base of a mossy tree, and kneels down to examine them.  
  
"Well, I have no idea what you find so entrancing about the river," John says, "but I can't fault you for not spending all your time here. It's not so bad, I guess, but it would be better  _above_  the trees."  
  
"Pretend you're an earth spirit for a few hours," Rose suggests, gently brushing the surface of a petal.   
  
"Why would I want to be an earth spirit, that's so lame."  
  
Moving on again, Rose says, "Really? I think it'd be fascinating. Think of the wealth of matter at your disposal. Rocks, trees, the land itself." She stops again to look up at a particularly large tree, the trunk too wide to wrap her arms around. "And the very forces of life, yes? You could grow entire forests before your eyes. Seasons in seconds. Watch the leaves unfurl, coax the flowers to bloom, even in the deadest land..."  
  
The last she mutters almost to herself, gaze unfocused. John is unmoved.  
  
"Who cares about growing trees," he says, "that's not nearly as cool as knocking them down. You got a one-man hurricane."  
  
Rose looks at him over her shoulder. "Lucky me."  
  
"It's not like you need more trees anyway," John goes on as Rose continues weaving through them. "I think you have more than enough already."  
  
"I suppose I can't argue with that."  
  
For a while the only sounds to break the silence are birdsong and Rose's footsteps, soft but not inaudible on the twigs and pine needles. John watches for other animals, but he sees hardly more than a chipmunk here and there, so he has to settle for watching Rose. Where is she taking him, anyway? Every once in a while she stops to examine something, or gaze off into the distance between the trees, but their path has seemed almost aimless.  
  
"Are you trying to get us lost?" he says after a while.  
  
"I know exactly where we are."  
  
Now it's John's turn to raise an eyebrow. Rose regards him coolly and continues, "But even if I didn't, you would have no problem locating the house. All you'd have to do is fly up far enough to see it, correct?"  
  
John grumbles an affirmation; navigating _is_ awfully easy for him. She really doesn't have much to worry about as long as he's here.  
  
But she doesn't ask much of him for the morning, once they finally get to work making use of her newfound magical skills. She coerces drops of water from a patch of moss using the same technique that allowed her to move it in the bowl; when her skirt gets snagged on a thorn bush, she shoots tiny bits of concentrated energy at the vine to cut it away without getting her hands dirty. She practices moving objects of varying shapes and sizes: a stick, some loose leaves, even a beetle they find crawling on a log. Now and then she comes across a couple herbs or mushrooms that she carefully plucks from the ground and gives to John to store in his pockets until they get home. But then she's right back to finding practical uses for her abilities - using a blast from her wand to clear debris from a patch of dirt, putting a charm on a small circle of rocks to contain the fire she starts on the kindling in the middle.  
  
At least an hour or two must pass before they decide to rest for a while. Rose sits against a tree trunk, cradled in the roots that jut from the ground next to it, and John settles a few paces away over the grass and peels idly at the longer stalks.  
  
"Hey, Rose?" he finally says, when she makes no move to start a conversation. "How far from here have you been?"  
  
"Hmm?" At the edge of his vision he can see her drag her gaze from somewhere high in the branches down to him, but he doesn't look up.  
  
"I mean, have you traveled around here? Farther than the town?"  
  
She thinks for a few moments, leaning her head back against the bark. "Yes, I've been beyond the town. There are some other villages around here, and a large city to the southeast that my mother and I have visited two or three times. But other than the occasional trip to pick up some rarer supplies for Mother's work or such, there's not much reason to leave here. Few acquaintances to visit, small chances of finding any books of interest to me in reputable shops."  
  
"So you don't really know what's out there? In the rest of the world? It is pretty big…"  
  
"So I've heard." Rose tilts her head in his direction without removing it from where it rests against the trunk. "But I am aware of what's out there, yes. I've read about it, and seen maps and drawings, and heard stories from travelers. Jade - you remember the huntress I told you about - she's quite the globe-trotter herself, for someone her age." She pauses before adding, "Why?"  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Why are you asking? Surely someone in your position has seen a fair bit more than I. Can't you see entire countries at once from the sky?"  
  
John shrugs. "Yeah, well, kind of. I can certainly see a lot more. But I haven't been all the way around the world or anything, at least not that I remember, and it's all just basic shapes from there."  
  
Now Rose sits up, looking more interested. "You haven't been around the world? Even in your hundreds of years?"  
  
"We don't just wander around doing nothing, you know! We have weather to regulate or whatever, so we don't leave our places very often."  
  
"You're assigned a location?" Rose asks doubtfully.  
  
"Well not really  _assigned_ , it's not like we have a boss who deals them out. We can kind of move, but not like, way far. I'm sure I've seen plenty of land, sometimes even close up like this, but there wasn't much reason to come down before so most of the time I didn't bother."   
  
Rose hums thoughtfully. "So you were perfectly amenable to sitting on a cloud doing the same thing year in and year out for gods know how long, and yet no more than a few weeks of witchcraft study have left you bored and restless."  
  
John frowns and looks back down to the shred of grass in his hands. Is he that transparent? (In the metaphorical sense; he knows very well how literally transparent he can be.) Or is she just frustratingly good at reading him?  
  
"It's not the same," he says. "It's different down here."  
  
He doesn't have to look up; he can hear the quirked eyebrow. "How so?"  
  
"I don't know, it's just... it feels different. When I got summoned it was almost like... waking up? But not really, because I was always awake, but time passes differently. Like it's less... blurry."  
  
Rose doesn't reply, and now that John  _does_  look up, he finds her gazing off into the trees. Well, let her chew on that for a while. She's not likely to understand it any more than he does, or doesn't.  
  
He goes on, "So what's your excuse? Haven't you ever wanted to travel?"  
  
"Not particularly. I hadn't given it extensive thought. I suppose the idea of leaving home has always been lurking on the horizon, with the rest of my vague, unplanned future, when I'm cast out into the world to begin my own quest of adulthood. But wanderlust has yet to take hold of me."  
  
"Oh."  
  
Rose waits a moment before adding, "If the idea appeals to you that much, though, perhaps I could start considering it."  
  
John shifts a little, almost feeling like the grass is pricking him. It isn't; he's still floating. "If you want, I guess. I mean, you don't have to on my account."  
  
"I'm aware, but perhaps it's an experience we could both stand to gain. In either case, there's nothing stopping you from traveling alone if you wish."  
  
"And just leave you here?" John frowns.  
  
The look Rose gives him in return is faintly amused. "I've already survived eighteen years without you, John. Your assistance has been helpful, certainly, but it's not crucial, and I'm not entitled to it. If you wanted to take a sabbatical and travel I can't very well make you stay."  
  
"Sure you could," John says. "I'm supposed to be serving you. That's how it works."  
  
It takes Rose a moment to answer. "John, I want you to get this through your head: you are not a slave, you are not a servant, and you do not have to blindly 'serve' me for the next sixty years. I thought we decided to be friends, not a master and a dog."  
  
"But I'm your familiar, I'm-"  
  
"No," Rose says firmly, and John looks up again, unconvinced. "I don't care what you're 'supposed' to do. Consider this an order if you want: you are your own person and you have the right to act like it. You've been saying since I first summoned you, we're in this together. If you want to do something, tell me. If you don't want to do something, tell me. Be honest. That's what friends do."  
  
"Okay," John says, and for a minute it's quiet.  
  
Then Rose says, "So let's start now. Tell me what's really on your mind."  
  
"Ohhh no, this is a trick. You're trying to pull that therapy thing on me."  
  
"I am trying no such thing. Come now, don't pretend you don't have anything you want to tell me. A complaint, a concern; give me something to work with."  
  
"You want me to criticize you?"  
  
"If that's what being honest will entail." Rose has plucked a small, white daisy from the ground and now twirls it absently between her fingers. "Continuing to keep all our grievances unaired will make this a tense friendship at best. One can't attempt to fix a problem until one recognizes it." She pauses. "Of course, it's possible our definitions of 'problem' will differ, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Or if we come to it, given your feelings about rivers."  
  
John narrows his eyes. Okay, so he can't claim he's been on board with everything she does. But what's he supposed to say? What exactly is it that bothers him? He watches her watching the daisy for a moment, as if he can find some sort of hint in her face, but she's unreadable. Just like those times with the pranks. And the rest of the time, really.  
  
All right, so maybe the answer  _was_  in her face.  
  
"Okay, well... I was thinking about how you're kind of secretive about your emotions and stuff, and it's frustrating! And really not fair. I can't help that the weather sort of changes depending on how I feel. If I'm mad all you have to do is look outside for signs of storms to know I'm upset-"  
  
"Usually I don't even have to look outside to tell that."  
  
"-but if  _you're_  mad how am I supposed to know? You don't show it, and you don't tell me, even if I ask! You act like things are fine when it's obvious they're not and I don't know what I'm supposed to do."  
  
Rose taps her fingers against her knee. "While I could make a case that your lack of subtlety is half the problem and call this an impasse... to be entirely honest, John, sometimes I envy your transparency. Despite your unwillingness to mention these things until prompted, you can be emotive almost to a fault. Even if at times you have trouble articulating your feelings, you don't have trouble making their presence known. While I..."  
  
She doesn't finish the sentence; he waits, and the silence stretches.  
  
Eventually, she sighs. "It's one of the things I like about you, you know."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"And it's... somewhat odd? We tend to think of sentiments and passions as the domain of humanity, as if spirits are above emotional turmoil - quite literally, in your case - and yet you are one of the most expressive beings I've had the pleasure of meeting. And as difficult as it can be for me to comprehend your mode of thinking, as grating as it might be at times to deal with your boundless energy applied in either the positive or the negative direction, it's... admirable. That you can so easily do what has plagued me for years."  
  
John continues to pluck at the grass in front of him. "You... like that about me?"  
  
He can practically hear her roll her eyes, and looks up to see her watching him. "Yes, John, believe it or not you do possess qualities I find attractive."  
  
Rose holds his gaze only a few moments before glancing away. "I-In the most general sense of the word, of course."  
  
"Of course, yeah, I didn't..."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
She makes no effort to further address the problem, and John, still not sure about this honesty hour thing, takes advantage of the distraction.  
  
"So, um." He drifts up far enough to extend his legs without his feet touching the ground. "Shouldn't we be heading back? Unless you wanted to work some more, or..."  
  
Rose shakes her head as she gets to her feet. "No, you're right. I think we're done for the day."  
  
She sets off in the direction from which they came, though a few minutes' walk once again puts them in territory John doesn't recognize. But hey, she got them in here fine; maybe she really does know her way around.  
  
They haven't been walking long when Rose halts, stumbling slightly, and only John's ability to stop floating instantly keeps him from running into her back.  
  
"What?" he says, as she raises one foot to rub her ankle.  
  
"It's nothing, the path just dipped all of a sudden. I wasn't watching where I put my feet. Stupid," she mutters, more to herself, twisting her foot in a circle once and putting it back down.  
  
John follows the motion with his eyes and looks at the sloping ground; the edge of a small bush obscures part of it, but he can see something moving beyond the leaves, something... reflecting? Rose has apparently noticed, too, because she brushes some of the branches aside to reveal a pond - no, too small to be a pond. More like a glorified puddle, collected where the ground seems to be as much stone as dirt.  
  
"That's weird," John says. "It hasn't rained lately, has it?"  
  
"No. I don't think it's accumulated rainfall," Rose says, kneeling down. "Probably a spring, bubbling up from underground. Maybe it's connected to the river."  
  
The water looks clean and mostly still until Rose dips one hand in. The ripples dislodge a small leaf at the edge, clinging to the mossy bank, and John watches it float into the center of the spring.  
  
"Hey," he says, "you should do the seeing thing with the water."  
  
The dim outline of his reflection appears next to Rose's as he comes closer. "I can do it just as easily at home."  
  
"But it would be good practice! Isn't that what you came here to do? Just make use of whatever witchy things you find in the middle of the woods? It's  _real nature_. Maybe you'll see something different, I don't know."  
  
Rose looks up at him for a long moment and then gives a halfhearted sigh. "I suppose I may as well try, if for nothing other than the experience."  
  
It hardly takes a few minutes for her to find a patch of plants that she says are suitable for divination. Yarrow, she calls it, collecting a pile of little feather-shaped leaves in one palm as she strips them from the stems. Marjoram would be nice as well, if only it grew in this area. John nods blankly and wonders what marjoram is. (Maybe she would have preferred an earth spirit after all.)  
  
Returning to the pond, he watches as Rose stirs the clear water with one hand, muttering an incantation. The water continues to swirl when she removes her fingers and drops each leaf, one by one, into the spring. At first they do nothing but follow the slowing circular path of the water, but as the surface stills again, the leaves collide and start to assemble into some kind of shape.  
  
John leans closer over Rose's shoulder. Will the leaves actually show something? Rose never talks about what she sees in her divinations, but there's no way he can miss this one.  
  
Slowly they shift until they form a few rough lines, a triangle with something like a club through it, but as the water ceases rippling the fourth line merges with the other three and goes still.  
  
"...Just a triangle?" John asks, drooping a little. "But that's so..."  
  
"Deceptively simple," Rose murmurs. Abruptly she stands, and John has to float backwards to avoid being knocked over. "Let's continue home. I'm sure I have a guide to symbols somewhere."  
  
She looks around and then heads off through the trees. By now John has lost all idea of where they are, so he follows, expecting that she's right - she's always right, isn't she - but after a while she seems to become more unsure, casting glances around her every so often.  
  
"Are you sure you know where we are?"  
  
"Hm?" She looks up at him. "Of course. See that rock? We passed it on the way in."  
  
Okay, he does remember the rock. It's covered in vines from some weird plant next to it. But she's still peering through the trees in the direction of nothing interesting.  
  
"So are you looking for something, or...?"  
  
Rose doesn't stop walking. "No, why?"  
  
"Oh, just... I guess it's nothing, never mind."  
  
They both let it drop and continue fairly quietly the rest of the way home. Only once does John have to fly up above the trees to get their bearings; a good thing, too, because the route Rose had set them on would have left them at the river's edge sooner than the back door of the house. ("It was close enough. The river's a hop and a skip away from home." "Yeah, if you're me and can hop hundreds of yards at once.")  
  
The first thing Rose does upon their arrival is settle in front of a bookshelf, pulling off every volume likely to contain an answer, flipping through the pages, and adding it to the stack on the floor. Some of the books have been untouched long enough that she has to wipe dust off the covers; it clouds in the air and makes John sneeze twice before he decides he'd rather wait outside.  
  
But by dinner she still hasn't found what she's looking for. "I know it's somewhere in this house," she tells him as they ascend the stairs to her room. "Perhaps it's time to collect and catalog my references." John looks at the scattered clothes, books, and knitting supplies on her floor and doesn't comment.  
  
Tired from their hike, they give up the search and do little else that evening but talk. John collects a handful of multicolored yarn scraps, the results of both spells gone right and spells gone wrong, and fashions them into funny shapes in midair. Rose eventually kicks away the yarn balls she was trying to wind up without her hands (significantly harder than _un_ winding them without her hands) to tell a story about a street vendor at a local festival who sold similar crafts. Before John knows it, night has already fallen, and somehow he doesn't mind that he's wasted a little of his exploring time; when he wishes her good night before he leaves, Rose even returns the sentiment, and he's smiling as he disappears.


	11. Chapter 11

"I'd say we should pronounce it a success," Rose decides the next day when they look back over what they accomplished outside, and throughout the next few weeks she and John take to the forest or the river's edge more often to conduct their practice. John grumbles about both the water and the trees, but never fails to float along behind her, so that eventually Rose stops having to look to know he's there.  
  
They limit their excursions mostly to better-weathered days, at least after the afternoon that Rose tried to work in the rain and succeeded only in somehow becoming a raindrop magnet. (It took her hours to get dry, muttering from under her towel first about what might have gone wrong with her water-movement spell, then about how her weather deity of a partner chose to laugh instead of help her.) Days that are too wet, too cold, too windy, they stay inside, or at least Rose does; John, excited by the sound of branches knocking against the windows, calls her a "fair-weather witch" and sometimes leaves her to work by herself for a bit while he sails around on gusts outside. Even an impromptu evening thunderstorm doesn't deter him, and in fact Rose thinks it's the most ecstatic she's seen him yet.  
  
As she begins to master the spells and techniques she had been working on when John came into her life, she goes in search of newer, more difficult things to study. There's certainly no lack of options; she digs out books and scrolls about which she had nearly forgotten, reading out methods to harness otherworldly power, instructions for charms, and accounts of ancient witches said to be so powerful they became immortal themselves.  
  
Rose finishes one of these tales late at night and taps her fingers against the binding of the tome for a few moments. Stories of men turning to gods are surely exaggerations; such a thing can't be possible. But eternal life - the fountain of youth, the philosopher's stone, alchemic potions for longevity... most people consider them fables, but who can say for sure? Unless, of course, she were to find one for herself...  
  
She shakes her head and sets the book on her nightstand.  
  
The first real day of summer, judged not by the calendar but by the temperature, they spend the afternoon lounging around the study rather than venturing outdoors. ("What are you, a vampire?" John jokes. "Or you just can't take the heat?" But Rose notices a breeze in the room even when the curtains are still and she knows she's not the only one adverse to hot and stagnant air.)  
  
While Rose reads an old novel, a break from thinking about magic for a while, John sifts through the bookshelves, poking at some of the stranger-looking volumes. A number of them are in different languages, some simply foreign but more in ancient, lost, or "forbidden" tongues that Rose often struggles to interpret into something understandable to either of them.  
  
A simpler book he plucks off the shelf turns out to be something akin to a cookbook - Rose hasn't looked at it in a while but she remembers the cover, watching him from her chair across the room - and he flips through the pages with mild curiosity before saying, "Hey, Rose."  
  
"Hm?"  
  
"Why don't you do potions or stuff like that? I thought witches were all about cauldrons and weird bubbly stews."  
  
Rose keeps her eyes fixed on her book and her head resting against one hand, elbow propped on the wide armrest of her chair. "Do you believe every gross stereotype about witches that you hear?"  
  
"I just realized I've almost never seen you mess with things like this." John shuts the book and uses it to gesture at the shelf. "It's just kind of weird, usually you're out to try anything in your books, and you've certainly got plenty of them on the subject."  
  
"The disproportionate number of written works about potions is probably because it's a more accessible discipline for beginners, or more well-known in general. Anyone with the ability to follow basic instructions can throw a handful of ingredients into a pot, and there are a variety of uses for the concoctions that result. As such, it's fairly popular among practitioners of the occult."  
  
"If it's so easy then why don't you do it? Or, let me guess, it's  _too_  easy for you?"  
  
Rose looks up, but both John's voice and face are devoid of the scorn she expects. She shifts in her seat.  
  
"It's partially a matter of finding the supplies. All but the most basic potions generally require rare herbs or animal parts or odd ingredients that aren't exactly sold at your local market."  
  
"Well I could help with that!" John takes up another book and turns a couple pages. "I could find herbs or animals in the forest or something. I've got nothing better to do at night anyway."  
  
"That's generous of you, but if the things I needed were within easy reach, don't you think I would have discovered them already?"  
  
Now he rolls his eyes. "Yeah, but I can fly farther in a day than you can walk, and if you gave me more than a day I could do even better. Besides, some of this stuff isn't  _that_  far away. See, like these herbs?" He holds up the book to show her a few sketches of an odd, spiny-looking plant. "I'm pretty sure some of them grow farther up in the mountains. Farther up than you would go by yourself, I mean, but not that far if you fly. I don't even have to worry about getting mauled by mountain lions."  
  
Rose flips the corner of her current page with one finger as she considers. "I'll grant you that. Of course, a fair number of potential ingredients are too exotic even for you, but I'm sure you could expand my collection nonetheless."  
  
"Yeah!" John says, snapping the book shut. "And then you could do a lot of things with them, right? I mean, you said it's pretty easy, so you could even teach me, in case I ever need to know this stuff when you're not around. It's not the kind of magic I'm that familiar with, so..."  
  
"I may have oversimplified it, to be honest. The wrong balance of ingredients could turn a love potion into a poison, in the worst cases, so it's necessary to be very precise and have accurate guidebooks. But, that said, I'm sure reading simple directions is within even your grasp."  
  
John narrows his eyes at her, and Rose smiles back - at least until he says, "But anyway, you said it was  _partially_  a matter of supplies. What's the other part?"

_He picks the most inconvenient times to be observant._  Rose sighs and slips her bookmark back into her novel. "You'll think it's stupid."  
  
"Aw, come on." John collapses backwards to mime sitting in an invisible chair. He even leans to the side and props his arms on the "armrest" as he stares at her. "I thought we were doing that thing where we try to be better friends by not keeping secrets or whatever."  
  
Rose returns his gaze levelly, but she can't deny that she was the one to suggest that, and he  _has_  been trying. Not always successfully - but he listens when she tells him to stop messing around while she's trying to concentrate, and he speaks up more often about what he wants, like deciding to step outside for a while if she has no reason to keep him. She, in turn, has agreed to endure the more obnoxious side to his sense of humor... to a degree. (Her wands may be fair play, but he's still not allowed to spirit off her journals.)  
  
With nowhere left to dodge, she finally says, "You recall I told you that my mother is a scientist."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Some off-kilter variety of science that she practices in her lab all day and which requires odd supplies."  
  
"You said you thought it might be some kind of alchemy?"  
  
"Yes. That's my theory, anyway. And such a variety of alchemy likely would involve mixing ingredients to create a solution more than the sum of its parts."  
  
John looks at her for a long moment. "So?"  
  
"So practicing potions is not a far cry from what my mother does for a living, and the last thing I need is to give her reason to further involve herself in my affairs, or, god forbid, start thinking I wish to follow in her footsteps. I'm sure she'd love to apprentice me in some ironic bid to make a mockery of my interests yet again."  
  
John reclines farther and blows air out of his mouth in a gesture that, for most, might have expressed exasperation, but for him succeeds only in causing a draft that rattles the door in its frame.  
  
"You know, Rose, I really don't think your mother is out to get you! Are you sure you're not just, you know, reading too much into the things she does for you?"  
  
"John. You've known my mother for fewer months than I can count on one hand."  
  
"So I'm unbiased!" He shrugs, turning his palms to the ceiling. "I don't know, Rose, she just doesn't seem all that duplicitous to me. I think she'd honestly enjoy helping you with potions."  
  
"Yes, well." Rose glances out the window; the square of bright blue sky it offers fails to betray how hot the sun is beating down. "Regardless of intentions, I neither want nor need her help in this respect. But..."  
  
"But...?"  
  
"But you're right. As long as I'm exploring every niche of witchcraft I might as well dust the cobwebs out of this cranny, and I'm not as averse to your assistance if you wish to help me gather supplies. Shall I draw up a list of things for you to look for?"  
  
John regards her carefully for a few moments, his lips turning down at the edges. Rose is actually more surprised not to hear the words "changing the subject" come from his mouth than she is at how effortlessly he leaps up from his non-existent chair.   
  
"Yeah, sure," he says. "And maybe some pictures if you have them? Plants and animals aren't really my thing and I wouldn't want to accidentally poison you."  
  
"Of course not," Rose more mutters than replies, and sees John shoot her a look before he pulls another book off the shelf. "Bring those over here and we can get started now."  
  
The stack of books levitates across the room to land gently beside Rose's feet. While John quite literally disappears to find some paper, Rose puts her novel to the side and picks up the topmost book. It's one of the newer ones, at least compared to the ancient, beat-up volumes she's recovered from who knows how long ago. She remembers toying with it once or twice but getting distracted with more interesting magic - magic less up her mother's alley and easier to practice with makeshift supplies.  
  
Come to think of it, it was her mother who found this for her. She brought it home as a gift for Rose after she'd been away for two days "on business," as if a belated suggestion about how to pass the time would make up for leaving her young daughter alone so long. Or at least, that's what Rose thought of it at the time, but...  
  
The swoosh of air heralding John's return distracts her, and she puts the book down to accept the pad of paper he offers.  
  
"So, got anything in mind for your first witchy concoction?"  
  
"I suppose," Rose replies, leaning over to choose a new book from the pile, "we should do the logical thing and start at the beginning."  
  
John pulls up his legs to levitate cross-legged beside her armchair; Rose settles into her seat, picks up her pen, and turns to the first page.


	12. Chapter 12

Preparing the potion list takes up a good afternoon, and John excitedly gets to work that very night, but Rose insists on putting off the actual experiments until they're better stocked up. In the meantime they organize what little they already have - mostly the more common varieties of herbs, some old and so dried up that a touch breaks them to pieces - and turn to other pastimes.  
  
Fortunately most days dawn nearly as bright but mercifully cooler than the few that keep them inside, and one finds Rose and John striking a compromise in location for the afternoon's studies; she keeps mostly to the porch, in the comfort of the shade, while John has full reign of the yard.  
  
"Ready?" he says, brandishing a handful of sticks hardly larger than his fingers.  
  
"Go ahead."  
  
John tosses the twigs into the air, floats them there for a moment, and then with little warning propels them rapidly in Rose's direction. Rather than moving she waves her wand in a sharp motion in front of her; two of the sticks abruptly fall to her feet, two collide with her shoulder and thigh, and the rest clatter against the wall and window behind her before dropping to the ground.  
  
"Well, two's not bad," John says, stirring his weapons into the air again from across the yard. "At this rate if a bandit attacks you you'll probably just be mortally wounded instead of instantly killed."  
  
"If I'm lucky the bandit might even have your impeccable aim." Rose brushes some specks of loose bark off her shoulder. "Are you trying to destroy my windows? I'll give you a tip, traditionally a log makes a better battering ram than a twig."  
  
John snatches the projectiles back into his hands. "Shut up, you know I could focus the wind to send them straight at your neck. I'm just trying not to poke your eye out."  
  
"I appreciate it, mom." The words have hardly left Rose's mouth before she feels a small but sharp slap to the forehead. The stick bounces off her arm and falls off the edge of the porch.  
  
"Too slow." John is holding another stick like a dart, one eye closed as he mimes aiming for Rose's face, but still he pauses before letting it fly. She blocks it easily, sending it twirling off to the side without touching it. The next doesn't go so well; despite her gesture with her wand, nothing stops the wood from plowing into her stomach.  
  
She kicks it away to prepare for the next assault. "Try making a more sweeping motion," John suggests, readying the rest. "Broader."  
  
This time all but one of the sticks falls against her force field.   
  
"Hey, that was pretty good," John says.  
  
"Thank you. I suspect you're right, a sweeping arc is less likely to leave gaps or weaknesses in the enchanted area. It feels more graceful, as well."  
  
John's smile grows wider but he says nothing, and a suspicious question doesn't quite make it past the tip of Rose's tongue before she feels something prod the back of her head. Turning around brings her face to splintered edge with one of the sticks, levitating just above eye height; she swipes at it, but it jumps away to poke her in the shoulder before moving out of arm's reach.  
  
"John," Rose says.  
  
"Just keeping you on your toes!" The stick evades her grasp once again, even while John is rooted to his spot in the yard, stretching his arms over his head. "We wouldn't want you to start thinking you're  _too_  clever, now, would we?"  
  
Rose turns her wand over in her hand, carefully watching her floating foe. "Were this an epic tale spun by a traveling bard in the local tavern, and I the tragic hero therein, a warning about the dangers of hubris might be appropriate."  
  
"What," John says, punctuated by the stick darting in to jab at Rose's leg and slipping between her fingers yet again.  
  
"But as things stand..." One quick motion - her arm jerks up, her wand sends a current of energy straight at the twig, and it goes flying, half-charred, into the grass. "...I feel my perception of how clever I am stands at a pretty accurate level."  
  
She's half a second away from a smug grin when another poke at her ankle wipes it off her face. This time it's a rock, small but heavy, knocking gently at the edge of her shoe.  
  
John's smug grin doesn't disappear. "You sure? I'm just saying, you're still a bit slow to  _me_."  
  
"You're remarkably obnoxious today," Rose notes, but she can't quite keep a smile off her own face. She kicks at the rock as if at a soccer ball, sending it an entire six inches away before its path suddenly swerves and it flies right into John's waiting palm.   
  
"So are we done?" he asks, tossing it up and down.   
  
Rose slips her wands back into the sash around her waist and bends to pick up a few of the deflected sticks still littering the porch. "Yes, I think that's enough of that."  
  
A breeze at her back alerts her to John's presence on the steps; "oh, let me," he says, and then a gust strong enough to whip her skirt around her calves blows the rest of the debris off the porch.  
  
"I'm sure my mother will thank you.” Rose walks up to the railing to toss her sticks into the grass. "She can skip the ironic housewife cleaning routine tonight."  
  
"Psh. You mean the sweeping thing? I thought she just liked keeping her floors clean. Unlike someone else who lives here."  
  
"Are you implying everything in my room is not precisely where it belongs?"  
  
John joins her at the edge of the porch, the end of his hood winding across the floorboards behind him. "I don't know, do most people use their clothes as throw rugs?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Oh. Okay then, you're good."  
  
Rose leans over the railing, letting the breeze brush her bangs across her forehead.  
  
"You still want to fly, eventually?"  
  
Next to her John is looking at the sky. She follows his gaze; the wind is pushing a few fluffy clouds toward the horizon and the sun is bright toward the east.   
  
"I do."  
  
"But not like last time."  
  
John’s teeth dig into his bottom lip for a moment. Rose lets her hand slide off the railing.  
  
"No."  
  
"Well..." In one fluid movement John pitches himself over the rail, floating down to the ground a little too slowly to look normal. "I could just pick you up with the wind! I'm sure it can support your weight if I keep it moving. I mean not that you weigh that much anyway, but it's, you know, light as air and all that."  
  
He shrugs as Rose walks down the steps to meet him on the lawn. "While that sounds fine in theory, I'm not certain it's a good idea to suspend me hundreds of feet off the ground with no support other than air." There's really only one alternative to that, she knows, though how to go about it she's still not sure - and yet she feels an odd sort of excitement, not quite trepidation, as she waits to find out, and she's not sure it's entirely from the idea of flying.  
  
"Okay, well what about..." John approaches her haltingly, raising his hands and then lowering them again. "Can I...?"  
  
Exactly what he wants to do is left a mystery, but Rose nods anyway, and then all at once her legs come out from underneath her and the wind delivers her the remaining three feet to his arms, one under her knees and the other around her back. She blinks up at him as she processes what just happened.  
  
"Is this okay?" He shifts his hand against her ribs and his face is a little redder than she remembers. "I promise I'm not going to drop you, and even if I did I could just catch you with the wind. As long as you don't freak out and wiggle away from me. Just... trust me?"  
  
The look he gives her is imploring, a lot more devoid of sass than she expected. Rose's heart is beating a little too fast and part of her wants to scold him for using the wind to pick her up right after she told him not to, but, well... it wasn’t that bad, was it? She can't say she's entirely happy with the idea of being helpless in his arms rather than helpless just beyond his arms, either, but he's trying, and really, it's probably this or nothing.  
  
So instead she smiles and wraps her arms around his neck. "Okay."  
  
Rose is so focused on the way his face brightens that at first she doesn't realize they're steadily rising; when she looks down she can see only the roof of her house. There's something disconcerting about watching it shrink, knowing that if she were to fall from here she would almost certainly die, but John's arms are stronger and firmer around her than she expected, and it's... comforting, a little.  
  
A turn to the left brings the sun into view; this high there's nothing to obstruct it, and Rose sees its radiance reflected in John's expression.  
  
"It is such a perfect day," he says, and she wonders if he's really oblivious as to why.  
  
His ascent gradually gets faster - or maybe Rose just imagines so, because she's starting to get the tiniest bit dizzy. Instead of looking down she gazes out across the landscape, almost too much of it to behold at once, until John slows to a stop.  
  
"I guess we shouldn't go too high," he says, looking up at the empty sky above them and then down to the ground. "It gets cold and the air is thin and I don't think it's good for humans?"  
  
"Perhaps not. The sky may not be meant for us, just as we aren't meant for it."  
  
John leans forward as they start to move more horizontally. "It's too bad you can't see the clouds, though. I mean, they're pretty much just water vapor or something? It's like being in fog, but in the sky! And then once you're above them, they look the same on top as they do from below, like solid, puffy ground!"  
  
"I'll have to take your word for it."  
  
Rose huddles closer to John's chest as he picks up speed, following the river, impossibly small below them. The wind is cold and whips her hair around her ears, and she almost has to close her eyes against it. Mental note: goggles would help next time. She glances up at John and wonders if that's one of the reasons he wears glasses - but then, he's a sky spirit. Does the wind even touch him? He's smiling, the trail of his hood marking their path behind them, and Rose thinks he really is in his element here. She can almost feel the energy radiating from him, imagine how he would dissolve into the air and  _become_  the breeze, aimless and free, and somehow it makes her feel lighter too.  
  
"I don't think you get the full effect like this," John calls over the rush of the wind, slowing down a little. "You can't really feel it, like... the way you're suspended and surrounded by it, and completely free from everything..."  
  
"I don't think I can be completely free from everything, John," Rose cautions, tightening her arms around his neck a little. "Gravity has trouble letting things like that go."  
  
He comes to a stop again, drifting backwards a little as if floating in a pool of water. "But you know I can stop gravity!" Rose raises an eyebrow. "Well, no, not  _stop_  it, but counteract it with the wind."  
  
"John, if I didn't want you to do that when we were a few feet off the ground, why on earth would I want you to do it here?"  
  
"We're not on earth, we're in the sky," John says with a broad grin, and Rose considers informing him that they are in fact still within earth's atmosphere but maybe he's right - maybe she should trust his judgment. This is his territory, territory he's had centuries to explore and understand, and if he says he can do it, well, why not? It  _was_  fine for those two seconds on the ground, and he hasn't failed her so far.  
  
"...You're absolutely certain that the wind can support me well enough?"  
  
No sooner has Rose spoken than one of John's arms shifts under her and her heart nearly leaps into her throat - but it's still there, he was just moving it higher up her back. He's not going to drop her to prove a point, of course not, that would be ridiculous.  _Trust him._  
  
"Rose, I can lift fucking boulders with nothing but air. I am pretty sure I can hold you up for a couple of minutes!"  
  
"At no harm to myself."  
  
"All I have to do is direct the wind to push you up, it'll be like... having a giant fan under you? Except you'll barely feel it! I am very good at manipulating air, Rose." He waggles his eyebrows, and Rose isn't sure if that was supposed to convince her of anything, but it does coax out a smile, and she shakes her head.  
  
"Well, we've come this far. I might as well."  
  
It occurs to her, taking in a deep breath of chilly air to steel herself, that they might have started with baby steps. He could show her what floating feels like somewhere that's not level with the top of a small mountain. Maybe over her bed. No one dies from falling a few feet onto a bed.  
  
And then maybe they could take it outside, and he could fly with her to the roof, and they could gradually work their way up to tiptoeing across the tops of the trees, and then hovering alone in a vast expanse of sky wouldn't be so terrifying.  
  
Yes, there was probably a much better way to go about this.  
  
But now they're here, and he's asking if she's ready, and it's not too late to say they should go back down and start somewhere a little more reasonable, but she can feel the adrenaline and for some reason she nods.  
  
"Don't make any sudden movements and don't look down, okay?"  
  
As John extends his arms away from his chest, forcing Rose to let go of his neck, she can already feel the wind rushing below her. It makes the loose edges of her clothes flap wildly and feels almost like a physical presence at her back. At first she thinks John has lowered his arms from her, but then she realizes he hasn't moved - the wind is slowly pushing her up and more upright, away from him, she's not touching  _anything at all_ -  
  
"Oh my god," she whispers, and she's sure he can't hear but he has the biggest grin on his face, his arms still stretched out beneath her, and she hopes he's concentrating or could do this in his sleep (he doesn't sleep, she reminds herself) because she's feeling extremely lightheaded at the moment.  
  
The dizziness fades, and she doesn't know if it's because she's hyperventilating or because the air is too thin this high that she's finding it hard to breathe, but John was right - there's something about flying that's downright  _euphoric_. Nothing can touch her, nothing but the air that surrounds her; this is something humans were never meant to do, a feeling authorized for birds and insects and the gods themselves, and here she is, merely human but so much more, nearly touching the sky realm, as high as mortals can possibly go.  
  
She closes her eyes and drinks in the feeling - air so cold she can feel it in her lungs, the wind rushing over every part of her body, like floating in water but without the weight, without the resistance all around her. Finding her tongue, she opens her mouth to tell John she understands now why he'd rather hover than walk, but when she opens her eyes -  
  
He's not there. There is nothing in front of her but sky, and in her panic to find him she twists and looks down and holy shit they are a long way up. The river is like a strip of ribbon and the forest and farmlands are patchwork greens and yellows, split by thin strips of road and red-brown roofs, and it seems to swim before her eyes.  
  
"Rose, grab onto my back," John says from beside her - beside her, he's been there all along - and she doesn't hesitate to throw her arms over his shoulders and wrap her legs around his stomach for good measure. He supports her thighs with his hands and he's warm, a little, or maybe that's just the lack of wind against her skin now, and soon enough the alarm passes and she's able to look down again.  
  
"It's an incredible view," she says into his ear to distract herself from her own trembling. "Everything on the ground must look so different when you're used to seeing it from this far away."  
  
"You think so?" John says, starting to move over the countryside again.  
  
"It certainly puts things in perspective. How petty are the lives we stress over day in and day out? We're merely specks against the landscape, ants to you, with lifespans to match. To think one could get lost in a forest like that when the exits are so clearly visible from above, or spend an entire day traveling roads that from here are no longer than my hands. When you step away for a moment, everything is so much more trivial than we act like it is."  
  
She can feel John shake as he chuckles. "You disagree?" she asks.  
  
"No, I guess that's true. I mean, it is pretty funny when humans act like things are really big deals when they're not! But I guess they don't know any better. Why would anything this vast be important to them if they're never going to see it?"  
  
"Hmm." Rose tries to relax a little, releasing the tension in those muscles that still want to cling to him for dear life, and feels his fingers shift against her leg in response. "I suppose you have ample time to consider these things, so who am I to argue?"  
  
"Haha, nah, I don't really think about it that much."  
  
"Oh. Well then, concession rescinded. I will combat your philosophy all I want."  
  
"You do that!"  
  
The river continues to wind through the country far below them. Rose's heart is still pounding, and she thinks John can probably feel it, but for once she doesn't care. It means she's  _alive_. Her hands still loosely grip his shirtfront and she buries her face in his hair for a moment, glad that he can't see her smiling.   
  
Eventually John doubles back and follows the water until they're almost above Rose's house again. "Ready to go back down?" he says.  
  
Rose is just beginning to feel comfortable - or at least no longer terrified - but also oddly tired. Her limbs are still tense and she's just now starting to realize how awkwardly close they've been this whole time and as amazing as being weightless feels it's still a tad disorienting. She can't really object to this being over.  
  
(For now.)  
  
Coming down is an odd feeling, like everything around her is too big and the ground, which she formerly had prized for being stable, too steady. The air is still once John stops moving, and as Rose slides off his back, staggering a little on her feet, she's fairly certain her skin has been windburned.  
  
John turns around, still smiling. "I told you, Rose, flying is incredible!"  
  
"I can't disagree with that any longer," Rose says, and notes how close he's still standing, and on impulse leans forward to lightly kiss his cheek. "Thank you for being so persuasive."  
  
For a moment John completely freezes, and Rose is torn between concern and self-satisfaction until he jolts back into motion. His grin widens despite the hint of pink on his cheeks that she's fairly certain is  _not_  a windburn.  
  
"You're welcome!" he says, and then, quickly, "S-so does that mean you're not going to object to flying so much in the future? Do you wanna... do it again sometime, or something?"  
  
"I suppose I can be a little less obstinate about the matter, yes." Rose takes a few steps, stretching out her legs, and motions for John to follow her back to the house. "It's certainly something worth exploring further. But not right away. I think I need to sit down for a moment."  
  
John floats behind her up the porch steps, perhaps happier than Rose has ever seen him before. "Heh heh, okay. You know if you're tired I could fly you th-"  
  
"Don't get carried away, John."  
  
Something worth exploring further indeed, she thinks as she steps inside. After all, summer has barely begun.


	13. Chapter 13

The days seem to fly by after that. Rose finally drags out her supplies for doing potions work, and she and John set up shop in the observatory, surrounded by a small wall of books and handwritten notes on the subject. With a promise that they'll get to the "really cool!!" concoctions later, she starts off by showing John some of the basics, and only twice does he accidentally destroy the large bowls they're using by mixing something wrong.  
  
Rose works cautiously, almost furtively, stealing away up the stairs and hunching over her books as if she expects her mother to burst in at any moment with some kind of terrible and malicious offer to help. John still thinks it's silly. Her mother probably doesn't even know what she does all day, with all the effort Rose puts into covering up her activities. And in any case, having Ms. Lalonde help them might not even be so bad! John still hasn't gotten to talk to her much, at least not nearly as much as he talks to Rose. He fails to see why Rose is so on-edge around her.  
  
But if she's suspicious of her mother, she's finally starting to seem more at ease around him. She puts up with more of his pranks, and smiles more often, and once he even made her  _laugh out loud_. At first he wasn't sure they could really do the friends thing, even once they decided to try; it seemed like a chore, having to change to fit her standards. Wasn't friendship supposed to be a natural thing? Maybe they just weren't  _right_  for each other. But it's as if something clicked, and watching Rose write gibberish words in the air, quickly-evaporating trails of purple energy at the ends of her wands, John thinks staying with her might actually be... well, enjoyable. He just hopes Rose feels the same.  
  
"John," she says, snapping him out of his thoughts.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
It's a warm day, but an overcast one, and they've been out in the yard for most of the morning. Rose is sitting on the lawn with her wand in her right hand and an array of objects in a half-circle around her.  
  
"The writing spell is fine, so let's get to work on this. What was it you were saying last time?" She gingerly picks up a small gray feather and lets it float back to the grass. "To focus on the air, not the object itself?"  
  
"Yeah. Well, to an extent." John straightens from where he's been laying midair nearby and moves closer to watch. "More like... where the air and the object meet. You need both."  
  
Rose's brow knits as she concentrates, pointing the tip of her wand at the feather and slowly motioning upward. The feather follows shakily, as if perched on something unsteady, and then falls back down. A few more tries yield the same result.  
  
"Hey, that's not too bad."  
  
"That was hardly six inches off the ground."  
  
"Well, it's better than before, isn't it?"  
  
Rose sighs and leans forward to rest her elbows on her knees. This is her third attempt at levitation; the second followed closely on the heels of their first flight, but wasn't very fruitful. They haven't done much flying since then, except for an evening when Rose allowed him to lift her a few inches off the ground. "For experimentation's sake," she'd said, and indeed she seemed intently focused as she hovered. John kind of thought that thinking too hard about it would take the fun out of it, but then again, he doesn't have to think about it at all.  
  
And in any case, maybe she learned something from it, because today she's had markedly more success making things float. They're actually coming off the ground for more than a second! Before she could jerk them up into the air as if they'd been tossed, but they'd fall right back down in the same way. Now there's a moment - getting increasingly longer, he thinks - that they hover at the top of the arc.   
  
Rose moves on to a finger-sized piece of bark, and then a weightier piece of wood, and then a small stone. Each takes a little more effort than the last, but she manages to lift them up just the same. For a time.  
  
The frustration evident on Rose's face prompts John to speak before she does. "Don't worry, I'm sure it just takes practice. At your rate of progress you'll be able to do it eventually."  
  
"I'm sure that's easy for you to say, with the next few thousand years of your schedule free."  
  
"Hey, that's not true." John floats down across from her and mirrors her cross-legged position, a few inches off the ground. "My next hundred years are booked. And they're dedicated to helping you! So. Let me see if I can think of something."  
  
He crosses his arms over his chest and tilts his head to the side, and if he's not mistaken Rose is barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes.  
  
"I'm eagerly awaiting your expert advice, oh sage of all things wind."  
  
Ah yes, John's new favorite game, Was That Sarcasm or Just Rose Lalonde's Silly Way of Wording Sincere Statements? To be honest, he's not very good at it.  
  
"So..." he finally says, thinking it best not to stress over it. "What are you focusing on when the object starts to fall?"  
  
"The same thing I'm focusing on when the object starts to rise."  
  
"If it's not something like a lapse in concentration..." Does Rose even  _have_  lapses in concentration? Sometimes when she practices she looks so intense he's surprised her eyes don't burn holes in her books. "And it's not just that you're expending too much energy, since you can do it over and over. Hmm..." He taps his fingers against his arm a few times and suggests, "How about you try it with an object already in the air?"  
  
Rose fiddles with the piece of bark, turning it over in her left hand. "Perhaps if the object was stationary. Trying to catch something that's been tossed would only complicate matters."  
  
"I can make it stationary. Like..." John uses the wind to lift the rock off the ground, making it hover at chest-height for Rose. "Now you try to lift it from there."  
  
Rose frowns, but sets the bark down and grips her wand. When she points it at the rock, John expects to feel something happen - a pull on the stone, or the force of Rose's magic interfering with the grasp of his wind - but nothing seems to change. In fact, the rock doesn't even move.  
  
"Are you..." he starts, but Rose narrows her eyes, says "Quiet," and he shuts up. Within seconds the rock begins the same shaky ascent as it did from the ground; it hovers even after John stops manipulating the wind, and then starts to drop.  
  
John shrugs. "Maybe a little longer."

"But not by enough to really matter." Rose sets her wand down in the grass. "Let's try something else."

"Well..." John rubs his chin absentmindedly. "What if... do you remember back when we first met, and you showed me how you could light candles with no matches, and I said you should try lighting fires with no candles?"  
  
"Yes. I was under the impression I would need to master levitation before such a thing would be feasible for me."  
  
"Maybe you should try it, though? I mean, fire isn't really a solid object like these things are, so maybe it would be easier to make it float?"  
  
"No," Rose says, grabbing her wands and standing up in one quick motion.  
  
John looks up at her. "No? No it wouldn't be easier, or..."  
  
"No, we're not going to do that." Her tone leaves no room for argument; John floats high enough to unfold his legs beneath him and watches Rose march past him.  
  
"O...kay? Why, though?"  
  
She stops halfway to the house, looking thoughtful, and for a long moment John's not sure she even heard him. Then she fixes her gaze back on him and says, "It's an obvious safety hazard, John. So far everything I've tried to keep afloat has fallen into the grass. I trust you're familiar enough with the ground to understand that when fire is not contained in a grassy field, it spreads."  
  
It takes John a few seconds to respond, wondering if he's imagining things or if that really was a hint of derision in her voice, like the way she used to talk to him - like he's too stupid to figure things out on his own.  
  
But he ignores it, because even if she  _was_  making fun of him - which he trusts her not to do! - he's already one step ahead of her. "Duh! Of course I know that. But a little ball of fire wouldn't spread that fast. I could easily put it out. Or you could! All you'd need is a bucket of water and you can splash it onto the fire with just your wands."  
  
For a moment Rose hesitates, but only a moment; then she's turned around and heading toward the house again. "No," is all she says. "It's too dangerous."  
  
John frowns. What's put her in such a bad mood? Or, well, maybe not a  _bad_  one, but a stubborn one to be sure. He thinks about asking her, but Rose is so ridiculously cryptic about some things that he's not sure he'd get an actual answer out of her. Maybe it'd be best not to pursue it.  
  
So instead, he vaporizes and slips into the house with her when she opens the door. She doesn't look at all surprised when he reappears in front of her and asks, "So what do we do now? It's not lunchtime yet, is it?"  
  
"No, we've some time yet. But there's something I'd like to do. You're free to go for now, if you wish."  
  
She moves past him to the staircase and he's left floating by the door, watching her ascend. Free to go? Does that mean she  _wants_  him to go, or...?  
  
Today's extra dose of aloofness aside, it's not  _that_  unusual for her to dismiss him when she's got something else to do that she thinks he won't be interested in, like reading books irrelevant to him or doing chores around the house. She does have to live, she sometimes reminds him; if only she were so lucky so as not to need to eat or sleep or own more than one pair of clothes. (John doesn't think she means it, really - she is rather partial to things like picking out her outfits or a good glass of lemonade, even if she doesn't like to admit it - but he sees her point.)  
  
Still, he'd kind of like to know what it is she's doing. He drifts up the stairs to find her door still open, and hangs awkwardly above the top step for half a minute, weighing her dismissal against the invitation of an open room. But curiosity and some sense of familiar obligation push him silently down the hall to peer around the doorframe.  
  
Rose is just climbing onto her bed with something flat and roughly the size of her notebooks in her hands, which John immediately knows isn't paper. As she positions herself in the middle of the bed, it tilts just enough for him to see the other side flash - a mirror, he thinks, one of those portable ones just big enough to see your head in.  
  
John's weight shifts forward for the slightest second, about to propel him through the doorway to join her, but as she props the mirror up against a pillow in front of her he realizes she was right, she doesn't really need him for this. She's never asked for his help when she's seeing; he's not even sure he'd be able to see whatever she sees, since he has no idea how to do that kind of magic. Probably all he'd get would be a nice backwards view of the window behind Rose's back.  
  
So maybe there is no point in staying. She'll call him when she needs him, anyway; why not make use of his free time to do something fun? Like flying around outside, or... reading the nearly-abandoned books on the back of the shelves in the study, or... well, he's not really sure what else there  _is_  to do without Rose, honestly. Plenty to read, surely, but he's not that interested in reading, and he's explored all of the immediate area already, including the house, and...  
  
...Actually, that gives him an idea. If Rose is going to spend time on some kind of secret seeing project that she doesn't need him knowing about, he can do the same! Well, almost the same - he's still useless at divination. But he found something else he can work on instead!  
  
He looks into the room again to see Rose frowning at her mirror, eyes narrowed as if glaring down the image in front of her will change it. It seems she's got enough to think about for a while, so with that, he shifts into the wind and rushes off down the hall with a faint whoosh; an ornate painting on the wall sways slightly, and then all is still.


	14. Chapter 14

Much to Rose's chagrin, it turns out John is right: practice is all she needs to improve her levitation work. She devotes some amount of time to it each day, either choosing specific items for repeated drills in the yard or observatory, or attempting to raise arbitrary objects around the house. It's still slow going, though, frustratingly so, and John's attempts to placate her by reminding her that "hey, counteracting gravity is a hard thing to do" rather miss the mark coming from a boy who seems to forget most of the time that gravity exists.  
  
Little by little she manages to work her yarn balls up to the level of her bed, and little by little she and John make their way through the potion books, creating all sorts of tame but mildly useful concoctions. Rose herself gravitates towards power-enhancements and poisons - few at this level lethal unless ingested in quantities too large for her to make, but discomforting enough that she never fails to thoroughly wash everything that's touched them. John just seems to enjoy whatever comes up next in the book. It's not until he makes an innocent joke about disguising love potions as someone's orange juice or vodka (a harmless prank, really - at least in the long term) that Rose starts to think about spells for _detecting_ potions.  
  
They do test out a few of their works - the innocuous ones that temporarily bring good luck or alleviate small injuries - and enjoy some amount of success. The rest, however, Rose has to carefully dispose of, especially if there's any chance they've gone wrong. As much as she'd love to see if they all work, she refuses to be responsible for killing off all the fish in the vicinity with toxic chemicals.  
  
Even so, part of her can't help but feel that it's a waste. Sitting among a variety of oddly-colored liquids and John's  _what would happen if_ s, sometimes she feels moderately discontented, almost restless. What good  _is_  knowing all this, practicing all this, if she's not going to  _do_ anything with it? With no one even to show off in front of, it seems to amount to nothing more than parlor tricks in an empty house.  
  
In her more pessimistic moments, Rose wonders what she's doing. It's not as if she expected this to be one of her novels, she tells herself - no adventure in far off lands, a magical prodigy using her skills to topple kingdoms and save lives. No... not  _that_  fantastic, but certainly more than this. It's because she's still in training, she knows. Yet the questions John puts to her, about traveling and what she's going to do with her life, ring hollowly in the empty measuring beakers she "borrowed" from her mother.  _Something_  grand must be awaiting her, but she doesn't know how to find it, and she's not sure how long she wants to wait for it to find her.  
  
She shakes her head and tells herself she's being silly. That's not important right now. She's got the rest of her life ahead of her to figure all that out; better to make sure she's well-prepared before she sets out to make something of her years (will it take years?) of magical training. Which means she'd do well to focus on what's in front of her.  
  
The book she's been consulting is still lying open at her side, her wand in the grass next to it. Trying to change the size of an object is a step above making it move - perhaps a step she's not quite ready for, given the plate she almost broke this morning when her attempt at levitation suddenly went haywire - but one she's bored and ambitious enough to try.  
  
It hasn't been going spectacularly. Following the spell book's advice to use something malleable for practice, she managed to condense a sponge to half its usual size. Then she did it twice as fast by squeezing it in her bare hands, wringing out both the air and any feeling of success. John said it'll probably take more work than levitation, but then, this is something John can't do at all.  
  
Nor something he's very interested in, apparently, because he's been staring off into the distance for a while now. Rose can't blame him - not five minutes ago she had been lost in her own thoughts, after all. He's made little effort to offer advice she hasn't heard a hundred times by now, general counsel because he can't say anything more specific, so she leaves him be and touches the tip of her wand to a piece of bark.  
  
She's starting to think she should try making things bigger instead of smaller first (though what practical purpose that's going to serve her, she's less sure) when John finally snaps out of his reverie.  
  
"Hey, Rose..."  
  
Well, mostly snaps out of, anyway. His eyes are more focused but he's still looking at the sky.  
  
Rose's fingers glide over the scrap of bark, looking for any change in size, any sort of effect. "Yes?"  
  
"Do you think sometime, we could like... I don't know, do something a little less magic-y?"  
  
Rose looks past the bark at John. When he notices that she's not responding, his eyes finally turn to her, reflecting more uncertainty than she expected.  
  
"If we have time, I mean, I know studying is important to you but-"  
  
She cuts him off there. "Having the time is of less concern to me than the very fact that you're interested. What do you mean, 'something a little less magic-y?' Do you not want to do this?"  
  
Her tone wasn't accusatory, or at least it wasn't meant to be, but his hands fly up defensively. "No! I mean, no, it's not that... well, I guess sometimes I kind of wish we could do something else when it starts to drag on, but like... I just mean that almost all the time we spend together we spend working on witch stuff, which is fine, but it might be nice to... do some other stuff together? You know... hang out, or. Something."  
  
One of his hands has drifted to his shoulder, where his fingers are rubbing along his collar anxiously, and probably unconsciously. Rose considers for a moment - considers the progress she's made in the past few months, both in her training and with him, how much more comfortable she feels around him now than she did in the spring and how uncomfortable, or maybe just nervous, he looks waiting for her to say something.  
  
"That..." she begins.  _Is vague? Would waste valuable practice time? Might be even more boring?_  "Sounds nice, actually," she finally finishes, and is a little surprised by how much she means it. "What did you have in mind?"  
  
John visibly relaxes. Was he really expecting her to shut him down without a second thought? Maybe he never did internalize what she was trying to tell him about making concessions for each other. Or maybe she just hasn't made it clear enough yet that she's willing to take his interests into account if he'd just speak up about them...  
  
"I, uh," he says. "Hadn't really gotten that far, to be honest. What do... what do friends do when they hang out?"  
  
His head tilts to the side slightly when he asks questions like that; Rose would like to pretend that the unreasonably long amount of time it takes her to answer is because she's analyzing that physical tic, or because she doesn't know where to start, but the longer he stares at her the more uncomfortably the truth lingers between them.  
  
She clears her throat. "I, well. I'm not entirely certain of that myself."  
  
He looks honestly surprised, which is... good? "You're not?"  
  
"I live in the middle of nowhere, John." Oh dear, she hopes she isn't coming across as defensively as he was a few minutes ago. But she can't quite stand to look at him at the moment, so she says to the side of the house, "And between my mother's somewhat odd line of work and my own... unconventional interests, my peers have not exactly been lining up to spend time with me. I'm sure you've noticed by now."  
  
"Well yeah, of course," he says a little too cheerfully. "It's always just the two of you here - well, three of us now - and you almost never go out. But you can't tell me you've never had friends?"  
  
"Of course I've had friends." Okay, that was a _little_ too much bristling. "Just... not a lot. And not... recently."  
  
John seems to mull over this for a few seconds before his face breaks into a wide grin. "Well, all the more reason to start now then! And since neither of us has really done this before, there's no wrong way to do it, right?"  
  
"I'm not sure I'd go that far." Rose picks up the bark again, rubbing it idly with her thumb. "Ignorance of the correct way to go about something doesn't imply that there is no right way."  
  
"Pft, whatever." Leaning back so that his elbows would be resting on the ground if he was a few inches lower, John looks up at the sky again. "In any case. What do you want to do?"  
  
"You know what I want to do," Rose says with so little conviction that he doesn't even look at her.  
  
"Come on, Rose."  
  
She sighs as she sets down the bark again. "I don't want to imply that the complete lack of ideas spouting forth here should be indicating anything, but I'm really not certain what you want to hear. It was your suggestion. If you come up with a plan, I'll go along with it."  
  
There's a glint in his eye when he looks at her. "Really?"  
  
Rose hopes the look she directs back at him carries sufficient warning. "Within reason."  
  
John smiles and gives a quiet "heh," but he doesn't look like he's up to anything, so Rose grips her wand again and levels it at the bark. Still, her mind is hardly focused on her drills. There's an odd sort of energy bubbling just beneath her skin, a cross of excitement and (dare she admit it) anxiety, not quite constricting, not quite invigorating. It's nothing to get up in a panic over, she tells herself as she fixes her eyes decidedly on her work and not John, sitting quietly beside her. It's not like it really means anything... right? They've been doing this friend thing for a while now. Sure, it's not exactly a typical arrangement, but whatever awkward bond they have hasn't been suffering from their odd choice of pastimes. Unless it has, and that's why John is asking... but Rose isn't sure that worry is the reason she's struggling to get her mind back on track.  
  
She tries to push it away anyway, and before long Roxy is calling to her from the window that dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes and she'd better have her magics put away and her hands washed by then. Rose looks at John; he shrugs and says, "I'm still thinking, okay?" before disappearing.  
  
Rose takes the opposite approach and tries not to think about it too much during dinner. If John is really set on doing something non-magical with her, then surely he'll come up with something. Rose just hopes it won't end up a rehashing of their forest-river inside-outside debates and they'll actually agree on whatever he suggests.  
  
When he returns in the evening, he brings with him no grand proposal, just a casual mention that there's going to be a meteor shower that night. Rose doesn't ask how he knows. Just after 1 AM he comes tapping on her window and she opens it to find him floating outside, offering to fly her out of her room. She rolls her eyes and takes the stairs instead.  
  
"You were supposed to let me carry you down," John pouts as they lay by the river, watching the sky and the fireflies that blink above them.  
  
The air is cool, teetering on the line between refreshing and chilly. Rose wiggles her bare, now-dirty toes when a hint of a breeze picks up. "The point of sneaking out of the house through a window is generally to avoid being caught. I avoided being caught by being quiet in the hallway."  
  
"Who cares about that, it's the principle of the thing! That's just not how you're supposed to do it."  
  
"Then next time start the way you're  _supposed_  to. Stand on the ground and throw pebbles at my window. Maybe then." She turns her head to grin at him, the grass tickling her cheek, and hopes he'll understand that she's joking even while she wonders if she really is.  
  
They stay outside until the soft sound of leaves rustling starts to lull Rose back to sleep. The third time she catches herself nodding off despite the occasional meteor still flashing overhead, she pushes herself wearily to her feet and rubs her eyes. John offers to carry her back up to her room; she shakes her head.  
  
"But thank you for inviting me," she says with a smile, and he smiles in return, and it's too dark to really tell but is he blushing?  
  
He tags along behind her as she walks back to the house, the hems of her pajama legs starting to pick up dew from the grass. "This isn't what I meant about hanging out, you know," he says, and then quickly adds, "I mean it is, but it's not all, I'm still thinking of other things we can do later so..."  
  
"I understand," Rose says as they reach the back door. "And I look forward to what you come up with." Her hand is on the doorknob and he's hovering right there, and for a moment she's seized with the strangest impulse to kiss him on the cheek again - to see his reaction, of course - but instead she simply smiles and says, "Good night, John."  
  
"Good night," he says, and he's still floating there smiling when she closes the door.


	15. Chapter 15

"So," John says from atop the back of the couch. "How do you feel about hiking?"  
  
Rose glances at him wordlessly from across the room. She's positioned her chair by the window, currently cracked open, to take advantage of the morning sun shining in. The book she's taking notes from is torn and falling apart, and apparently hard to read, if the way she keeps squinting at the faded writing is any indication.  
  
"Or not even hiking, really," John goes on, heedless of Rose's pen still moving. "More like... walking. Remember walking, Rose? I know you don't get out much but-"  
  
"I am perfectly capable of walking, yes," Rose says. "Though I'd prefer to know where you intend to walk, or rather make me walk, before I commit myself to something so troublingly arduous."  
  
John shrugs, looking out the back windows. "I was thinking the hills. You haven't been up there a whole lot, right? And I haven't seen a lot of it close up since I mostly fly over it in the dark, so..."  
  
So he had conceived that they might fly into the foothills; even carrying Rose he might condense half a day's walk into a few hours at most. "I said  _at most_ ," he repeats in response to the look she gives him. "And it doesn't all have to be at once. I can fly you for a while and then we can go down and walk for a bit, and then fly again later. We'll be somewhere new in no time."  
  
It takes less effort to convince her than he had expected, and since the weather is promising to be no more than moderately cloudy today Rose even decides they may as well go now.  
  
"You weren't planning on doing anything else today?" John asks doubtfully, watching her pack a few supplies into a lightly-used shoulder bag.  
  
"Of course I was." Rose rips a page out of her notebook and scrawls a note for her mother on it as she talks. "But it's nothing so important it can't stand to wait a day. I did say I would humor you as long as your plans were agreeable, didn't I?"  
  
And so they set off from the back yard only a few hours after sunrise, John promising that they'll be back no later than sunset. When he hesitates to pick her up, Rose moves forward almost brashly to turn him around and put her arms over his shoulders, and he's left with little choice but to grab her legs and hoist her onto his back. They'd already decided it would be the easiest way to travel - if not for comfort's sake, then at least for Rose's peace of mind. He's gathered by now that she doesn't like to feel vulnerable or helpless. This way she can hold on to him instead, and if her knuckles are a little white against his shirtfront, well, he pretends not to notice.  
  
It really is faster to travel by air, without all the hassle of tripping over rocks and hacking through bushes where there are no trails - a fact which John doesn't neglect to point out at least twice throughout the morning. Rose chooses to ignore him and instead remark on the view, the patterns of the trees from above, the inconstancy of the wind encouraging the clouds toward the horizon. After a while, where the forest begins to thin a little, she nudges John and he brings them down in a small clearing.  
  
She stretches for a moment and takes a drink of water before they set off through the trees, following the gentle slope of the ground uphill. As the forest thickens again the going gets slower, almost frustratingly so, but Rose looks amenable enough to picking her way around the worst of the underbrush, so John doesn't complain. Not having to carry her is kind of nice anyway - not that she's very heavy at all, but even if she  _was_  he doesn't think he'd have much trouble lifting her. It's just that he appreciates all the more now the ease of movement flying free gives him, being able to twist and hang upside-down at will-  
  
"I must admit," Rose says, "I'm rather surprised you would voluntarily suggest an activity involving so many trees. I was under the impression you found the forest constricting."  
  
She's found a good, mostly-bare branch to use as a walking stick, and rather than minding her footing she's currently watching John. He drifts easily around a tree and shrugs.  
  
"We're also doing a lot of flying over the trees, so... it's a compromise, right?"  
  
Rose only raises one eyebrow, and John averts his eyes. "Besides, the trees aren't... that bad," he adds, rubbing his nose. "Once you get used to them. Like you are. So have you been in this neck of the woods before?" he asks earnestly, turning back toward her.  
  
She doesn't argue with the subject change, just examines their surroundings and answers, "Quite possibly, but it's difficult to be sure. This far out much of it looks the same to me." There's a pause as she scrambles over a log too long to go around. When John offers no comments, she continues, "It's difficult to explore extensively when you can go only half a day's walk at a time. Any more would require camping out, and my mother has deemed that kind of venture rather dangerous to do alone - and for once I agree with her."  
  
"Huh, really?" John folds his hands behind his head leisurely, free from any fear of getting snared by errant blackberry vines. "I didn't really think that would bother you. If a bear tried to attack you in the middle of the night you could just blow it up with magic."  
  
"I'm glad I've managed to effect such a fearless persona, but there's a difference between carefully courting manageable danger and risking being mauled in your sleep. Besides, back then I was nowhere near mastering my highly-coveted bear-exploding spells."  
  
"Well, still. Your mom has guns, doesn't she?" John can already see it; Roxy Lalonde with one of those big rifles she keeps in the closet near the door, sights set on anything big enough to threaten her daughter. He doesn't know about the bear, but  _he'd_  certainly run, and he doesn't even have to worry about being hit.  
  
" _She_  does, yes; I was never quite as enthusiastic as she would have liked about learning to shoot. And she certainly brought them on the camping trips we took to meet our mother-daughter bonding quota, though I'm thankful she only had cause to use them once or twice. Have you seen a middle-aged woman try to aim a gun, halfway through a cooler of vodka?"  
  
John takes a moment to update his mental image, and Rose goes on. "But honestly, the prospect was never that appealing. There was little to do for that long in the woods, or rather little to do that can't be done just beyond our back yard."  
  
"Until you started needing supplies for potions," John points out.  
  
"Well, yes. But I had plenty enough to work on in the meantime. It's only in the past few months that I've started to progress through my books with any great speed."  
  
"I wonder why that is."  
  
Rose only glances at him long enough to see his insufferable grin. "Don't let it go to your head. You're not going to be single-handedly responsible for training the greatest witch of our age." After a moment of silence, though, she concedes, "But I suppose I can't discount your contribution, so maybe some thanks are in order."  
  
"Just some?"  
  
"A few. I appreciate your assistance, John."  
  
"Heh heh. I guess a few is enough." John ducks under a branch and looks ahead of them, hoping Rose won't notice if his smile is a little wider and more sincere. "Well, if you don't mind a bit more of my help, those look like some nasty thorn bushes up there. Want to start flying again?"  
  
Apparently Rose has no more desire to fight through the thicker patches of underbrush than John does, so they navigate their way to a space between the trees large enough for John to lift them both back up above the branches. The next time they come down the trees are even sparser, the ground a bit rockier and more uneven.   
  
They rest for a few minutes, just long enough for Rose to eat an apple while she stretches out her legs. John floats nearby, peering through the trees, and asks, "Do you recognize this place?"  
  
Rose hardly glances around her. "I highly doubt I've been this far out, at least not in years."  
  
"New territory then, sweet. We should hang around down here for a while and see if we find anything interesting."  
  
"Fine with me." Rose tosses her apple core into the bushes, and once John points them in the right direction, they set off into the woods again.  
  
For the most part it looks like the forest closer to Rose's house, except a bit more spread out, which makes it easier for Rose to walk and John not to get caught in any low branches. Occasionally the "trail" they're walking gets too thorny for Rose's liking, or abruptly ends where a tree has fallen across it, and John carries her to where the ground is clearer; once he has to do the same over a small ravine full of tangled bushes.  
  
There's a mossy pond nestled among some rocks where they stop to sit for a little while - bigger than the spring they stopped at last time, but not comparable to the river.  
  
"The river is west of here," John says when Rose asks. "I think we're almost straight north of your house, actually? But the river starts to curve away at some point because it comes out of some mountain pass over there, I guess."  
  
The water ripples around Rose's hand. "Do all nature spirits have such an innate sense of direction?"  
  
"Uh, I don't know really..." John scratches the back of his neck. "I don't remember interacting with many, honestly. But I know mostly because I've seen maps and stuff, I'm just comparing them to what everything looks like from above. It's kind of hard without landmarks or anything, but I think I know about where we are."  
  
He leads her farther uphill - north-northwest, he says - and as they walk they stop to examine flowers and try to locate the birds they can hear chirping around them. Rose recognizes some plants as potential potion ingredients, and strips off the leaves or pulls up the roots to store them in her bag. A couple times John finds some she missed; she takes his word that they were in the books and takes the plants, too.  
  
But John isn't here for potion supplies, and he spends as much time watching Rose as watching the foliage. She has a tendency to revert back to talking about magic whenever they find something applicable to it, but when he perhaps not-so-subtly changes the subject she seems amenable enough to being led in a different direction. And despite whatever concerns she may have had, it's not as if they run out of things to talk about! Stories about her life before he entered it are plenty interesting, and for every new tidbit of information about how the human world works he has something less commonplace to tell her. If he's a little vague trying to put the esoteric into words, well, most of what Rose knows she learned from books anyway, so the lack of definite experience is mutual.  
  
They've been walking for a while in relative peace, interrupted only by the occasional squirrel or deer in the distance, when something that's not the wind causes the bushes to rustle behind them.  
  
"What was that?" John says, looking over his shoulder.  
  
Rose barely turns around. "What was what?"  
  
"I thought I heard something moving..." Rose looks unperturbed, so John continues, "Something big, I mean, not birds."  
  
Both of them freeze, Rose twisting in place to see better but not moving her feet, John suspended in midair. But there's nothing out of the ordinary within sight, or in the air as far as John can tell.  
  
"...Maybe it was just a deer running away," John suggests, and they continue their discussion without much further thought.  
  
Another five or ten minutes pass, the thinning forest beginning to open up to a rocky glade on the side of the mountain, before they stop to note some new, scrubbier bushes taking advantage of the extra sunlight offered by the lack of trees. Rose is a little ahead of John, commenting on some pretty vines snaking up a trunk, but John stops when he hears another sound. The bushes a few yards away are quivering, too hard for him to blame birds or the wind. A squirrel or a raccoon wouldn't make that much noise. Another deer? But something in the air tells him otherwise, a ripple of movement not quite slim or graceful enough to be a deer, carrying with it a musk rather unfamiliar but which makes the hair on John's arms prickle.  
  
"Rose," he says, interrupting her. From the corner of his vision he sees her stop and turn to look at him.  
  
"What?"  
  
John's eyes are fixed on the bushes. "I think..." he starts, but doesn't get any further. "Oh, shit."  
  
Rose's head whips around to follow his gaze just as the cougar slinks out from behind the trunks and branches that obscured it before. It's obviously seen them; it stares back just as intently and moves close to the ground, almost prowling.  
  
"Um," John says. "Are cougars aggressive?"  
  
"They can be." Rose's hands have drifted to her bag, where they're slowly and quietly digging around for something.  
  
John starts to glide in her direction, inch by inch, hoping his hood twitching in the breeze doesn't betray his movements. "What are you supposed to do about them?"  
  
It takes Rose a few seconds to reply. "Watch them. Don't bend down or run, or they might chase. Back away slowly..."  
  
But the cougar has started to move forward now, shoulders rippling as it picks up one paw, then the next, and John says quickly, "That sounds like bullshit, can I just... blow it away?"  
  
With every step the cat takes Rose matches it backwards, but her steps are smaller, more timid, and she can go only so far before she'll start to stumble into the underbrush. John can see sweat beading on her face, and he doesn't think it's from the hike.  
  
"You don't want to aggravate it into pouncing," Rose warns, and John is about to ask if she'd prefer it attempt to eat her peacefully when she lets out a small yelp and claps her hand to her mouth. One of her feet ended up on a rather large pine cone, which cracked under her weight and threw her off balance, and the cougar has definitely noticed.  
  
Maybe that wouldn't have been enough to provoke it into moving faster - John isn't sure. All he knows is that he saw the ears prick up, the mouth open slightly, and he moved instinctively. The cougar flattens its ears and closes its eyes against the wind and the twigs and leaves it carries, and by the time it opens them John has already swept Rose into his arms. She's confused, one hand still in her bag and the other clutching John's shoulder, and everything's moving too fast but John doesn't care; he takes off straight up-  
  
Only to be jerked to a stop by a sharp sting in his neck. He holds on to Rose more tightly and before he knows what's going on she has one of her wands out of her bag and is pointing it behind his back, the telltale crackle of energy the only sign she's using magic.  
  
John turns around just in time to see one of her energybolts hit the cougar's leg below the shoulder; not the first she's fired, if the charred and smoking patches of bark and ground around it are any indication, but the first to make it let go of his hood. While the cougar is hissing in pain, John shoots up, making sure his hood trailing out behind him is far above the tops of the trees before he stops.  
  
For a moment he and Rose hover there wordlessly, her skin pale and heartbeat palpable. John feels too passive in comparison - no need to get his breath under control or stop his muscles from shaking, even though he feels anything but calm.  
  
"You're supposed to throw something at them," Rose says eventually, her voice strained but doing a good impression of flat and unruffled. "Puff yourself up, try to look bigger."  
  
"You picked a good time to remember," John says, but then admits, "Anyway, you did throw something at it. And you hit it, too."  
  
Rose swallows, regaining the rest of her composure. "Fourth time's the charm, I suppose." She pauses. "I wouldn't have had to if it hadn't have gotten your hood. You moved so fast."  
  
"Ugh, yeah, I totally forgot about the hood, and the fact that the wind was blowing that way. That  _I_  blew the wind that way. Stupid," John mutters. "You know usually I think the hood's pretty awesome, but not if it's going to get stuck in things."  
  
"Like claws."  
  
"Heh, yeah. Not usually a concern."  
  
From below comes the faint sound of birdsong and the rustling of leaves. John coughs. "So, uh, what do you want to do? We could go somewhere else or just go back home..."  
  
Rose looks around the wide expanse of sky over them, probably searching for the sun. John doesn't need it to know it's already early afternoon. "It is getting rather late... perhaps we should at least start back down."  
  
"That's probably a good idea," John says, and after taking a moment to reacquaint himself with their location begins to fly south.  
  
They're quiet for a few minutes, a forced kind of silence that makes the wind seem unnaturally loud. John's mind is just starting to settle back down when Rose speaks again.  
  
"Still, I wonder why it attacked us like that. I didn't think they normally went after humans unprovoked. Unless we were close to its den and it has cubs to protect, or something of that variety..."  
  
"Maybe it was me," John suggests, keeping his eyes fixed on the landscape below them rather than on Rose's face peering up at him from hardly a foot away. Damn, he really wants to scratch his nose or his neck or something, but he can't take his hands away from her this high up. "Animals seem to sense more easily than humans that I'm not like them, and some of them don't like it..."  
  
"You think so? I hadn't noticed. Hmm."  
  
Rose lapses into thought again until they stop a little while later for one last trek through a different, thicker part of the woods. Rose seems calm enough as John sets her down, though if anything he thinks her biggest objection right now would be that she had to stay in his arms for so long.  
  
He must be looking around more intently than normal, because she says, "Bear-and-cat-senses on high alert already? I don't think you'll have to worry; two incidents in one day must be quite the statistical anomaly. And more practically, we're probably still in that cougar's territory, and we know it's nowhere near here."  
  
"Pssh, I'm not worried," John says, shrugging. "Besides, if anything attacks you again, I can protect you."  
  
Rose stops for a moment, simply looking at him, and John is unable to decipher her expression before she begins walking again.  
  
"Yes, I suppose you can," she says. Behind her John tilts his head slightly. He almost expected something like displeasure, or annoyance at any implication that she's not fully capable of taking care of herself. But that's not what he meant, and it's not how she sounded, and if anything she seemed almost... pleased at the prospect. At least, that or amused, but he  _did_  just prove that he can do it, didn't he?  
  
He's unsure enough that he brings it up again as they're flying home, one of her arms wrapped over his shoulder and the other around his chest.  
  
"I meant what I said about protecting you, you know. You're... okay with that, right?"  
  
"Why would I object to a helping hand in any potentially fatal situation?" Rose asks.  
  
"Well, I just mean, you like to do things on your own, and you practically already had your wands drawn so you probably didn't  _need_  me back there, and I wouldn't want to like... show you up or anything..."   
  
The few seconds in which Rose fails to respond are made worse by John's inability to see her face - not that her face often gives away her thoughts, but he's gotten better at reading her, he thinks.  
  
"To be honest, John," Rose finally says, "accepting help at the expense of pride may be a lesson I could stand to learn. And in any case, it's a familiar's job to see to his witch's well-being, is it not? So yes, I am okay with that. Don't worry, I'm not going to get mad at you for not leaving me in some life-or-death situation to test myself."  
  
"Hehe, really?" It's about what he expected, if he consciously expected anything, but hearing her say it makes John happy for some reason. It's good to know that he's not in her way.  
  
"Mm-hmm," she hums in response, letting her cheek rest against the back of his neck, and somehow that makes his own face heat up enough that he's glad she can't see it. Still, the warm weight of her head on his neck and her body against his back has settled into something less burdening than comfortable, and he has no objections at all to her keeping her chin on his shoulder for the rest of the flight home.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to The Filler Episodes: Round 1

The next few days pass rather uneventfully, and for once neither John nor Rose complains. Their foray into the woods has inspired some extra target practice, using leaves and twigs on trees, or rocks or sticks that John moves around with the wind for an extra challenge. By the end of the week Rose's aim has hardly improved, but her shots never fizzle out anymore, and that alone brings a sense of extra security.  
  
"Why? You planning to get attacked by a giant cat again soon?"  
  
John has positioned himself at the edge of the roof, sitting with his legs dangling down over the eaves. His hood trails out beside him like the hair of a storybook princess, except the tip of it, dancing in the breeze, is still far too high for Rose to reach and far too electrically blue to be natural.  
  
She has to shield her eyes from the sun to look up at him, two stories from where she stands on the ground, but he makes no effort to come down. "I make it my philosophy never to be unprepared."  
  
"Well, you might want to stop preparing, just for now," John says, surveying the trees that line the back yard. "I’m not sure your mom is going to be happy about you replacing the nice forest view from her window with a lot of holes and charred branches."  
  
Rose follows his gaze. It's not  _that_  bad... or at least, the trees are still mostly intact. And the damaged areas will heal soon enough anyway; the energy bolts she shoots from her wands are powerful enough to sting and to smoke against wood, sometimes to crumble leaves and the thinner twigs into ash, but never to really burn. (Pure magical energy, she reminds herself, not fire; never fire.)  
  
The sound of fabric scraping against roof tile draws her attention back to John, who's now floating down from the roof like a feather - an uncanny, slow-motion fall that's most unsettling for how normal it's become. He stops a couple inches from the ground. "Are you going back inside?"  
  
Rose's wands are still in her hands; she tucks them back into her sash and dusts off her dress. "Yes, I suppose it is time for a break." One last check to make sure the smoke has petered out, and then she heads for the door.  
  
"Cool, there's something I've been meaning to show you actually," John says behind her, and a swoosh and rush of air tell her without having to look that he's already disappeared inside.  
  
He comes back a few minutes later when she's settled herself in the living room with her lunch, and sits cross-legged in the air in front of her, nearly beaming.   
  
"Hey, so, check this out." A stack of cards floats over, seemingly out of nowhere; John grabs it and shuffles it a little awkwardly, not least because he's not doing it against a solid surface.  
  
When he's finished, he sets the deck in midair between them and shakes out his short sleeves one by one.  
  
"Nothing up my sleeves," he says, completely seriously. Rose snorts.   
  
The top five cards of the deck levitate off and turn so that Rose can see their fronts and John can see only their backs. "Pick one," he instructs. Rose looks at him skeptically over the tops of the cards, surveys them carefully, and points at the second from the right. John sweeps the other four away and says, "Memorized it?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
The fifth card joins its fellows in the rest of the deck, which John shuffles again and then offers to Rose.   
  
"Shuffle it," he says when she only looks at it. She does, three times before she returns it to him. For a moment John stares at it very intently, as if he can read the cards through their backs; for a moment Rose thinks maybe he can, but then he flips the first card off the top, shakes his head, picks up the next, and so on until the seventh.  
  
"Aha!" The card floats up in front of Rose's face. "Is this your card?"  
  
Rose stares. "How did you do that? Were the cards marked?" Before he can retract it, she reaches up to snatch the card out of the air and scrutinizes the back. John offers her the rest of the deck.  
  
"Hehe, nope!" He winks. "It's magic."  
  
"I don't believe it." Rose looks up, having found nothing obviously out of place on the cards. "It must be some sort of trick."  
  
"Of course it's a trick! That's why they're called magic tricks, Rose."  
  
"I would hardly use the term  _magic_ ," she says, and doesn't have to look up to know John is rolling his eyes. She flips the cards off the top of the deck one by one, setting them beside her on the couch. "Can you feel differences in the cards through the air?"  
  
The wind tugs at the one she just overturned and delivers it to John's hands, where he spins it in the air idly. "They are all small thin rectangles, Rose."  
  
"But something tipped you off-"  
  
"Magic," John says, and reaches over to pluck a hunk of cheese off Rose's plate.  
  
He sniffs it carefully and then bites into it as Rose watches, the cards forgotten in her hands. "I thought you didn't eat."  
  
"I don’t have to eat." John shrugs. "Doesn't mean I can't. Hey, this is really good cheese."  
  
Rose sets the deck on the end table next to her plate. She considers the rest of her meal, then considers asking what other things he  _can_  do, and instead says, "You’re just full of surprises today."  
  
John smiles and pops the rest of the cheese into his mouth. "I know, aren't I a treasure."  
  
"Undoubtedly. Where did you learn that, anyway?"  
  
"From a book I found lying around. You don't know it? Actually I figured you wouldn't, it was buried under a bunch of stuff and pretty stiff and dusty-looking, but I thought you might know  _of_  it or something. Better that you don't though, it would've ruined the trick."  
  
"No, I don't know it." Rose leans back in her seat. "What book? I wasn't aware we had any tomes expounding upon the wonders of that kind of 'magic.'"  
  
John waves his hand dismissively. "I dunno, a Colonel Sassacre's something-or-other? By some old man. It's got a ton of really cool magic tricks in it, though. By the way, I hid it, so don't go trying to find it so you can spoil all my secrets."  
  
"Drat. There goes my afternoon."  
  
"Heh. But don't worry, I am learning plenty of awesome tricks in my spare time, so I'll have more to show you soon! And then maybe -  _maybe_  - you will be able to figure them out." John twirls around and sinks into the spot next to Rose, their shoulders brushing and his hood landing draped across her legs.  
  
She throws it back into his lap. "Thank you for that vote of confidence."  
  
"You're welcome! So what were you going to do for the rest of the day?"  
  
"Well, seeing as questing for your secret Sassacre magic book is out, we could continue attempting that size-changing potion. With any luck we can restore those wizard statues who so graciously volunteered to be our test subjects back to their original sizes before Mother notices their growth spurts."  
  
"Oh man, have they still not gone back to normal?" John leans over her to reach for her food again and Rose lightly slaps his wrist.  
  
"Don't waste food if you're not hungry. Our household income is meant to support a family of two, not a family of two and a bottomless pit of a supernatural teenage boy."  
  
"Rude!" John takes a bite anyway. "It's not like you guys are short on money. I mean, have you seen your house? Anyway, I'd forgotten how good some foods taste."  
  
Rose sighs and says, "Well, I'm glad I could be of service in reminding you," but she doesn't think he's fooled by her airs of exasperation with him - perhaps because she makes no move to stop him from sharing the rest of the plate, perhaps because she doesn't once object to the way he remains leaning against her shoulder.


	17. Chapter 17

One particularly hot day when John complains particularly loudly about his clothes being too stuffy, Rose throws something in his face and he peels it off to discover it's a dress, just like she offered to get him so many weeks ago. He gets a nagging feeling she's somehow testing him, or maybe even making fun of him, but even if she is, what better way to one-up her than to unabashedly go through with it? Isn't that what she's always saying she does with her mom?  
  
So he puts it on and she adjusts it on him with the weirdest (and slightly suspect) smile on her face. But of course it's too tight in places - he and Rose aren't exactly the same size, after all - so she takes it back to alter the seams.  
  
"I thought you knitted," John says, laying sideways across her bed in just his pants while she digs out her supplies and tries not to look at him.  
  
"Primarily, yes. But I did learn to sew a while back. Not well enough to fashion my own garments, but enough to make minor modifications."  
  
"That's kind of cool. Where'd you learn?"  
  
She tells him a story, of a caravan of travelers who stopped in their town for nearly a year, meeting new people, collecting supplies, selling foreign wares. Of a young girl about her age, fashion-minded, who made clothes for the caravan to sell, but also for her own enjoyment. About how the girl took an interest in her, and she supposes she took an interest in the girl as well, and about how the girl taught her to sew and she taught the girl to knit and they were quite close until the caravan decided to set out again and she had to leave.  
  
"That's tragic," John says when she's done, as he watches her carefully recraft a seam. "Young love, torn apart."  
  
Rose doesn't look up. "No one said anything about love."  
  
"Oh please, you just called her pretty and talented and smart and implied you saw each other like every day. Why else would you walk that far so often? You totally kissed."  
  
"Kissing may or may not have been involved."  
  
"Ha! I'm right. Don't worry, though, I understand." He pauses briefly, sprawled across the bed so that his head hangs over the edge, watching her in her nearby chair sewing upside-down. "I also know a girl who's pretty and talented and smart and I see her every day, and I don’t think I’d mind kissing her either."  
  
Finally Rose glances up - slowly, just her eyes, without moving her head. John grins at the faint blush on her cheeks that she pretends isn't there and Rose continues her work without saying anything.  
  
In return for his finished dress, she demands his usual outfit, and crosses the hall with the bright blue fabric bunched haphazardly in her arms. John idly glances at the mirror while he waits for her to return. He doesn't know a thing about human fashion (apparently), but he doesn't look too bad, he thinks. And Rose was right; the dress _is_ more airy and quite comfortable in the summer heat. It doesn't compare to how awesome his regular clothes are, of course, but it might be nice to have some options.  
  
He hurriedly looks away from the mirror as the door opens again. Rose comes in fully dressed in his clothes, the hood falling over her eyes and the hems of his pant legs touching the floor.  
  
For a moment they do little more than stare at each other - then John sees fit to mention how ridiculous Rose looks, and gets a pillow to the face for his troubles.  
  
"I'm some sort of wind god, don't make fun of me! I'm super powerful. I could blow you over or something terrifying like that," Rose says.  
  
"That is not what I sound like at  _all_."  
  
Rose pulls her hood up so she can look him in the eyes. "Want to bet?"  
  
"Yeah, well. Look at me, I'm a dark and powerful sorceress and I'm always gloomy and I knit dresses and write stories about super-awesome wizards because I'm too lame to actually be one!! But look at my handsome familiar, isn't he great. He's the greatest thing that's ever accidentally happened to me."  
  
He closes his eyes and puffs out his chest, but the retort he expects doesn't come. When he cracks one eye to see why, he finds Rose simply smiling, a softness to her features that he's not sure he's ever seen before.  
  
"I don't think I can argue with that, actually," she says.   
  
John blinks a few times and finally says, "What, that you're too lame to be a super-awesome wizard? Because I know you are, it's a certified fa-"  
  
The pillow collides with his face again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might be too busy next sunday to post the next update on schedule, but if so I'll try to get it up sometime within the week
> 
> as always, thank you to everyone for the comments/kudos, and happy holidays~


	18. Chapter 18

The days are long in the heart of the summer, giving Rose plenty of time even after dinner to continue working in the early evening light. The beginning of sunset usually finds her outside with John, the green and yellow grass in the backyard turned nearly gold by the sun, or indoors with the curtains thrown wide open and often the windows, too. It takes so long for it to become fully dark that they rarely need to light a lantern, or the candles in the observatory; it depends only on how much ambiance Rose requires for the night's activities.  
  
Tonight she requires neither, but has secured a bowl of water and a small vial of powder, some mix of crushed plants and minerals that she ground up from the ingredients John has been fetching at night. He doesn't really understand what it's for, since it's not really a potion, and he thinks it smells kind of weird too, but Rose ignores his unprompted comments and sits cross-legged in the middle of the room with the bowl in front of her. Across from her, John leans back against the wall, knees drawn up loosely in front of him even though he's floating high enough to see out the windows.  
  
Carefully Rose sprinkles the powder into the bowl, spreading it evenly across the surface and then stirring the mix with one finger. The substance dissolves, turning the water a little murkier, but it reflects the outline of Rose's hand above it just the same. Once she's satisfied with the result, she rubs her finger off on her skirt and leans over the bowl. John can't see very clearly from where he is, but he makes no effort to move.  
  
Instead, while Rose studies the water, John studies Rose. She watches the surface intently, unblinking; he's suddenly reminded of how cats fish, poised perfectly still over the water and ready to pounce.  
  
_She takes this really seriously_ , he thinks as she narrows her eyes at whatever she sees. His eyes remain fixed on her face.  
  
She's already learned so much in the past few months. John wonders how much time she had devoted to witchcraft before he met her. Enough to know basic spells and such. Enough to perform a summoning. But that was probably less about talent or experience and more about happening upon the instructions.  
  
Still, she's gone from lighting candles and peering into mirrors in order to find out what's for dinner to making her pen float into her hand and fighting off cougars. It fills him with a strange sort of pride. This is what he's supposed to do as a familiar, right? Help her. Watch her grow into one of the most powerful witches in all the land.  
  
Not that she really needs the help, he thinks. She seems to be doing pretty well on her own. As she carefully picks up a pebble and drops it into the center of the water, watching the ripples, he decides it's the passion. She can pretend not to care about a lot of things, but she's enthralled with sorcery, and she'll do whatever she has to in order to perfect it. There's this hunger for knowledge that draws her to books and tattered old scrolls, that compels her to repeat exercises for however many hours it takes to master them, that encourages her to stand outside even in the worst of weather battling trees and becoming a force of nature herself.  
  
It's admirable. He smiles.  
  
And maybe sighs or something too, because Rose looks up then.  
  
"Did you see any of this?" she asks.  
  
"Nah."  
  
He wasn't really interested, but Rose is frowning, tapping the edge of the bowl absentmindedly.  
  
"Why, what did you see?"  
  
She hesitates. "Nothing I haven't seen before, actually. But it's... troubling news."  
  
"Troubling?" John shifts to pull one foot under him, straightening up a little more. "How? You never told me what you saw the other times, you're always doing the dodgy secretive thing."  
  
Rose's brow furrows. "I suppose I thought maybe it would change. I believe the future to be a malleable thing, after all. But it's been nearly two months and the image is almost exactly the same."  
  
"What is it?" John asks impatiently, floating down and leaning toward the bowl as if it will tell him faster than Rose will. (At this rate it just might.)  
  
"It's..." Rose takes a breath. "A fire, mostly."  
  
For a long moment John just looks at her. "Oh," he says. "Well. Those are rarely good omens, are they."  
  
"No, and worse when you see them repeatedly. When I was using fire and smoke to scry, I thought maybe it was just a side effect... but when it's water containing bits of forest foliage, and mirrors reflecting the view from my window? It can't be a coincidence." She pauses. "All I get is an orange glow in the trees. Tips of flames and a smoky sky. And it doesn't change."  
  
The surface of the water ripples as Rose nudges the bowl to the side. John stares at it, trying to imagine her visions reflected in the water, wavering and uncertain, and almost doesn't notice her scoot across the floor to sit next to him. Almost unconsciously he sinks the rest of the way to the ground, closer to her.  
  
"So what does it mean?" he asks as Rose leans lightly up against him.  
  
Her arms are crossed over her chest, shoulders hunched almost defensively, and her gaze is fixed somewhere out the window. The setting sun has left the sky darker but tinged a dusky red near the horizon. The color unsettles him.  
  
"I would presume it's a warning. Every time I try to see the future I see fire, in an area surrounded by trees? It doesn't bode well."  
  
She seems more annoyed than concerned, as if the only thing that bothers her is that she can't figure it out. John doesn't buy it.  
  
"If it is then what do we do?"  
  
Rose finally looks away from the window and sighs, unfolding her arms to run a hand through her hair. "I'm... not sure. As if 'the future' weren't nebulous enough of a concept to begin with, I have no clues as to when this will happen. It could be tomorrow night or it could be years."  
  
"Night?"  
  
"The visions were dark, I believe. Though it's rather hard to tell with the flames burning so brightly and the smoke so thick.”  
  
John hums in reply and lapses into thought. It's not as if it's a sure thing, anyway; he's already warned her that scrying doesn't always work. People's decisions can change, things can go as unplanned, and accidents can happen. Is the fire an accident? If she's seeing it again and again it would seem that something certain is causing it, something that's not changing, but he can't think of any way to find out what. She can't choose what she sees, or rewind the visions to where the fire starts. Nor can she tell where or how it will end...  
  
He's reminded that Rose is still leaning against him when an elbow nudges his side. Unintentional, probably; she's not looking at him, she only shifted her position a little.  
  
All thoughts of the fire vanish, replaced with recollections of Rose kissing his cheek, or sitting on the couch far closer to him than she does to her mother. Maybe he should... could he...?  
  
It's not subtle; the moment he moves his shoulder to dig his arm out from between them he has her attention, but he doesn't let that stop him from wrapping his arm loosely around her shoulders. She doesn't quite succeed in keeping down a smile.   
  
"You know," he says before she can comment, and finds his throat suddenly dry. "I feel like this whole seeing thing really suits you."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
"Yeah, it's just... I don't know, you seem like the seeing type. Scrying is all about knowing things, isn't it? You find out what's going to happen so you can plan around it, or prevent it, or make sure it happens... it's all foresight. Strategy. Just very... you."  
  
Is she leaning into him more? "I'll take that as a compliment."  
  
"Yeah! I mean, I meant it as one, so..."  
  
"Then thank you."  
  
He's not sure what to say to that, afraid he'll ruin the moment, so he says nothing and neither does she. The patch of fading, reddish sunlight coming through the window slowly stretches across the floor, bit by tiny bit.  
  
"But..." Rose says after a while. "What good is seeing if you don't have the power to change what you see? Fine work it is to know what others can only guess at but do nothing more than wait for it to happen, no matter how unwelcome it will be."  
  
She's frowning again, huddled against John's side, and he thinks hard for an answer. The look doesn't suit her.  
  
"But you can change it, can't you?" he says. "You said yourself, you believe the future you see is just a possibility. The way things are going now, right? So you just have to figure out what to change in the present so that the future will..."  
  
"I believe that, yes. But I don't know everything about scrying, John." She turns her head and her eyes find his, searching. "And from what you've said I don't suppose you do, either."  
  
"...No," John admits, trying not to think about how close their faces are. "I don't really know anything about it, except that it can go wrong sometimes. Weather is all about the present, not the future. Storms don't care when they start or how long they last."  
  
Rose nods and says no more for a few minutes. John swallows, cautiously tightens his grip around her shoulders a tad.   
  
"I have tried, you know," she says eventually. "To change it. But nothing has worked so far. And I keep thinking... is it like you said, and I just haven't yet figured out what will cause it? Or is it actually unpreventable? It's impossible to know."  
  
John doesn't immediately reply and Rose shakes her head, the edges of a smile touching her lips but not her eyes. "I'm sorry. You don't need to be weighed down with something like this that doesn't concern you.”  
  
"But it does concern me!" John blurts out, and then when she looks at him hurriedly continues, "Because it concerns you, and I'm your familiar, so it's only right I should try to help you figure it out... isn't it?"  
  
She watches him for a moment longer before smiling again, a little truer this time. "Yes, I suppose. If you want."  
  
"I mean, I don't know how much help I'll be, but..."  
  
"That's all right, John." Rose hunches down a little farther and leans her head against his shoulder. "I don't know that I'll be that useful, either. I think it's all we can do for now to go on with our lives and keep an eye out. We could try to tackle it head on, but truthfully I wouldn't know where to begin looking."  
  
John scratches his cheek, thankful that from her new position she can't see him blushing. "Yeah, anything could cause a fire... not like you can destroy every match and piece of flint in the country."  
  
"Exactly. Just... keep it in mind, I suppose."  
  
"I will."  
  
They're quiet for a while, watching the light fade out of the room. Neither moves to get a candle or lantern even though Rose could light one with a snap of her fingers. John suspects she's still thinking about the fire, wonders how long she's been bothered by it in silence, remembers his arm is still around her. It's... it's kind of nice. He wasn't sure she'd go for this kind of stuff, but she doesn't seem to mind at all.  
  
So they sit in the observatory, contemplative, occasionally talking in quiet voices, until the world goes dark.


	19. Chapter 19

They don't talk much about the future after that. Rose had held out some faint hope that just having the conversation would change something - the fire, preferably, but she'd settle for a little of the weight on her shoulders instead. Unfortunately, there are no signs of either ceasing to exist anytime soon.   
  
So Rose does what Rose does best - retreats diligently into her studies, and tries not to scry too often. It's like watching a clock while waiting for something, she thinks; if there's no way to change the second hand's pace, there's no sense in letting its steady ticking consume your thoughts.  
  
John, for his part, doesn't seem to change much either, or at least if the knowledge hangs over his head he hardly shows it. Nothing seems to weigh him down too much. He floats above her while she practices, comfortable as ever, offering some input every once in a while - now advice, now a wisecrack she largely ignores. Occasionally he points out that she’s been working awfully hard lately, and shouldn't she take a break now and then?  
  
Huh. Maybe she has. Maybe she should.  
  
So one morning she digs out and fills up a basket while John looks on curiously from his perch on the kitchen counter, watching her move in and out of the room, trying to find some sort of pattern to her supplies. A book, chosen with painstaking care from the library bookshelves; her current writing journal, complete with more than one pen; a bottle of water and several food items wrapped in cloth. When the basket is almost full Rose covers it with a blanket, dons a light jacket, and leads the way outside.  
  
Their destination is a little clearing on the other side of the river, an area which, he notes aloud, John has seen from above but not explored very much.  
  
"I don't come to this side often," Rose tells him as they touch down, she on his back and the basket in his hands. "In large part because there's no reason to, but also because it's a hassle to cross the river. You have to walk a good distance downstream, closer to the village, to find a safe bridge. Otherwise you get to swim, and you end up wet and downstream of where you wanted to be anyway. I don't recommend it."  
  
"Or," John says, handing the basket back over, "you can summon a sky spirit and make him carry you wherever you want to go."  
  
Rose smiles. "Well. Problem solved."  
  
"Trust Rose Lalonde to know the most efficient way to do these things."  
  
The blanket that covered the basket becomes a rug for them to sit on, though John seems more comfortable sprawled out a couple inches above it. Rose takes to reading for a while, out loud when John asks, and once he joins her their voice-acting gets sillier and more dramatic until they're both laughing too hard to continue.  
  
To recover they leave the blanket and books and go to explore the woods. John collects flowers as they walk until he has a bouquet to offer Rose, a pitiful, mismatched thing made up mostly of daisies and buttercups and weeds, which she gladly accepts anyway. Rose is able to name a few of the birds flitting through the trees, and John is able to imitate their whistles and chirps with almost disconcerting accuracy. Once a squirrel darts across their path and John tries to chase it, just for fun, but forty feet up the trunk of a tree he loses it when he gets stuck trying to navigate between tight branches without dissipating.  
  
When they've gotten themselves thoroughly lost and can no longer recognize any of the rocks or bushes around them, John flies them up through a gap in the canopy and it becomes much easier to locate the clearing. For a while they simply lay on the blanket and talk, but as Rose gets out her lunch John snatches her notebook and floats too far above her head for her to reach. No amount of throwing flowers or pebbles at him gets him to come down.  
  
He's still flipping through the pages when the food is gone. Rose lies on her back and watches him, glaring every time he giggles (at what??? there's nothing funny in these chapters) and occasionally pointedly bemoaning her tragic fate, and his cruelty, and how she's going to have to forcibly end the pact if he doesn't-  
  
A face full of notebook stops her mid-sentence, and when Rose removes it and sits up John is next to her holding out a pen (one of the ones she threw at him earlier and didn't bother to retrieve when it flew straight through him and landed in the grass).  
  
"I'm caught up," he says.  
  
Rose flips back to her latest page. "Oh, wonderful, I was awaiting your input before I continued. Now that I have your permission I suppose you'll expect another four chapters by dawn?"  
  
"Four? No, no, of course not." John scoots a little closer to look over her shoulder. "You can do at least six or seven by then."  
  
Rose unceremoniously shoves him over before taking up a pen and rereading the last few sentences she wrote. She taps her finger four, five times, then silently continues the story. But three (admittedly rather long-winded) sentences later her hand is disrupted by another, holding a different pen, which takes advantage of her surprise to fill in the rest of the line for her in blue ink.  
  
"...John, that doesn't make sense," she says, trying to push his left hand away with her right. Undeterred, John draws a smiley face after the period.  
  
"Yes it does. You have no imagination, Rose."  
  
Rose crosses all the blue words out. "I have plenty of imagination, and also a highly-advanced sense of style and pacing. Leave this to the professionals, John."  
  
He snorts and starts the next sentence for her.

They get through only a few pages before John’s interruptions start outnumbering Rose's own words and half the lines are messy and scratched out. When he realizes he's winning, he starts drawing on the current page; Rose's attempts to write around him are incomprehensible and within a few minutes it's an all-out doodlefest, swarms of crudely-drawn people and spirits and tentacle monsters and birds and cats and windy swirls decorating every inch of the page by the time they're done. John flips to the next blank sheet. Rose takes his pen away.  
  
He leans on her shoulder and complains incessantly as she continues to write as if nothing had happened, criticizing her prose and making absurd suggestions. The more Rose tells him to stop the more force he puts into his leaning until he actually knocks her over, and she ends up on her back on the blanket. John takes the opportunity to wrap an arm around her so she can't get up or keep writing. He doesn't remove his head from her shoulder.  
  
No amount of pleas will convince him to move, so eventually Rose gives up and drapes an arm around him in return. It takes a while for the realization to sink in that their current activity could be construed as  _cuddling_ ; she tries not to smile at the odd fuzzy feeling it gives her and instead tells John off for squirming, but the harshness of her tone fades away when he nuzzles against her jacket.  
  
The sun is still out in full force and Rose can feel it warming her skin and beating down on her closed eyelids, painting her vision in soft waves of red and black and orange. John's arm across her waist is light, almost comforting, and she thinks if neither of them moved long enough she could fall asleep like this.  
  
Eventually a breeze picks up, blowing the stray edges of his unruly hair against her chin, and she leans her head away to stop the tickling. As if the movement was some sort of cue, John finally shifts over and lays down on his back beside her. The wind feels a tad too cold in the spot where his arm used to be, her clothes notwithstanding, and Rose wonders if it's too late to take back all the requests for him to move.  
  
He's watching the sky, so Rose follows his gaze and looks up. It's an absolutely perfect day; the sky is a bright blue dotted with fluffy white clouds moving only the gentlest bit in the wind.  
  
"Do you see anything?" she asks.  
  
"Huh?" John's head tilts in her direction, though his eyes don't move.  
  
"In the clouds. Shapes."  
  
Now he really looks at her, and blinks a few times before saying, "Is this one of those mind tests? You're going to pick my brain by assuming that whatever shapes I see are somehow indicative of my secret inner desires or something."  
  
Rose snorts softly and fights back another smile. "No, it's just a thing people do. Sometimes clouds look like other objects, that's all." She's not seeing any herself, really - but then, she's spending more time watching John than anything else.  
  
"Thanks for the idea, though," she adds, and John huffs and turns back toward the sky.  
  
"Well, I don't have to find shapes in the clouds, I can  _make_  shapes out of the clouds."  
  
"Oh, well pardon me." His eyes aren't focused on her at all, so Rose curls around to lay her head on his chest and feels him tense. After a moment his hand hovers at the edge of her vision, but he places it back on the blanket behind her.  
  
"You know," Rose goes on after a moment, "now that I know that, I'm going to expect you to prove it."  
  
She can feel the reverberations of John's voice through his chest when he speaks. "Fine, I can do it right now if you want."  
  
"Not right now. Stay here."  
  
The fabric of his shirt is soft against her cheek, the breeze isn't strong enough to counteract the warmth of the mid-afternoon sun, and Rose wonders idly how this happened. Certainly when she left home this morning she didn't expect to spend the day lying up against John; certainly when she first tried the summoning ritual she didn't foresee this at all.  
  
But she's not complaining, and he's not either as far as she can tell, regardless of what his indecisive hands seem to think. He finally works up the nerve to move his arm; a warm but light weight settles on her waist, and when she doesn't react some of the tension melts away from his body.  
  
It's such a waste of time, lying here outside when there's so much to get done, but Rose doesn't think she'd mind spending the rest of the day like this. Maybe other days, too. The thought strikes her as far too saccharine, but its aftertaste isn't so bad. Like summer sunlight and fresh grass and gentle breezes, tugging at her edges without wearing them down.  
  
No... this is nice, she can't deny it. She could almost forget about her problems, her magic, the fire. Just for a little while. And loath as she is to admit it, it's a kind of contentedness that wouldn't be possible if she were alone.  
  
She curls a little closer and reminds herself to thank John later, for somehow finding her this extra bit of room to breathe.


	20. Chapter 20

John can't be sure, but he feels as if Rose has been a little closer to him since that day. A tad friendlier, maybe, and the slightest bit more prone to physical touch. Is that weird? He's not sure. Certainly she was less welcoming when they first met, but she had long since grown out of that recalcitrance anyway. Her smile seems a little brighter now, but maybe it's just the summer sunshine.  
  
What he  _knows_  is that Rose has been studying even harder lately, despite the heat that hangs oppressively in the house in the middle of windless days, despite the distraction of sunlight and the cool river and soft grass outside. In fact, most of the time that she's not working with him, she's still poring over some big tome with musty old pages.  
  
"You get that from the village?" he asks her one day, floating close enough to her armchair to see the text on the page but not close enough to read it. He's not even sure he  _could_  read it, to be honest; maybe it's one of those weird books with the jagged, inky writing.  
  
Rose glances up at him without moving her head and then continues reading. "Yes."  
  
She had gone into town with her mother recently, a day trip on which John had not been invited. Not that uncommon of an occurrence, really; Rose does still have her daily life to attend to, which sometimes includes buying groceries or other human activities, and John's presence isn't exactly necessary for those.  
  
He doesn't mind much, not when he's been to the village a few times already. Besides, associating with other people means having to act like a human, which is kind of a drag. Literally, since he's not allowed to fly around the villagers. (He's been practicing his walking and his human mannerisms, and as far as he's concerned he could blend in perfectly, but Rose seems a little more skeptical.) Meeting other people is fun, but he can't strike up any real friendships with anyone in town without fear of being discovered - something Rose insists won't go over well.  
  
And anyway, he's got plenty to do by himself at home! He can work on his magic tricks, or look at Rose's books if he's feeling particularly curious about something, or go out and fly over the forest and maybe collect potion supplies while it's still light outside. It's not like he's bored.  
  
He doesn't know how Rose can stand it, though, staring at that same book day after day. He recognizes that it's new, at least in the sense that she hasn't owned it particularly long; if it was from her shelves, both of them would probably be more familiar with it. Now that even the books she used to never read have been dug out of hiding and dusted off, the covers usually ring a bell.  
  
So he's fairly sure it's new - but it's not  _recent_. The heavy spine looks nearly broken, some of the pages are ripped or stained, the paper is turning yellow, and despite it all the text apparently is still perfectly legible.  
  
And useful? It must be, if Rose is so interested in it. What's it even about?  
  
"Magic," Rose says when he asks her.   
  
John scoffs. "Well  _duh_ , nothing else holds your attention like that. But what's so special about it?"  
  
For a moment he thinks she's just not going to answer, but finally she looks up - really looks up this time instead of giving him half her attention.  
  
"It might be able to help me with the fire problem."  
  
John straightens up a bit. "That's great! How's it going to do that?"  
  
Now she hesitates. "It... offers a potential way to find out for sure what's going to happen, which should lead to a way to prevent it, if my theories are correct. Or if not that, it may simply give me the power to take care of it easily when it does happen."  
  
"Awesome! So we won't have to worry about that anymore?"  
  
"Well, presumably," Rose says, running a finger over the open page on her lap. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves; we haven't done anything yet."  
  
"Right, right." John waves his hand and then places both of them behind his head. "Still, that's pretty exciting!"  
  
Rose only hums and goes back to reading. For a few minutes John listens to the chirping of the birds outside, and the rustling of the leaves when the wind picks up.  
  
"So, uh... if that book  _does_  make you a lot more powerful, you'll still... want me to stick around, right?"  
  
Rose looks up again, brow furrowing. "Of course. Why wouldn't I?"  
  
"Well, just... once you master magic, there won't be much I'll be able to help you with anymore, so..."  
  
"Don’t be ridiculous," Rose says. "I'm nowhere close to 'mastering' magic. And besides, I won't just stop wanting you around. You  _are_  my familiar."  
  
Her words aren't sharp, or bitter, or anything more than a casual statement of fact - he's sure she's called him that any number of times, to no consequence - and yet this time they come with a strange stinging sensation.   
  
John ignores it and smiles. "I’m not your familiar, I'm your friend, Rose! There's a big difference." Rose looks at him blankly, and he goes on, "Well, I mean, I  _am_ your familiar, but..."

He trails off, watching Rose's expression morph to consternation and then... something like guilt?  
  
"You're right, I'm sorry," she says, looking aside. "You are my friend, more than anything else."  
  
There's a slight pause before "friend" that registers in John's mind, but is quickly forgotten as he fishes for something to say. "Um... I didn't mean to like, guilt you, I'm just saying..."  
  
"No, I understand," Rose says, the old conviction back in her voice. "I said I wanted you to be more than simply some magical servant to me, so I should treat you as such. You have every right to correct my behavior if I don't."  
  
"Well, it's not that big a deal," John says, looking back out the window. "So don't worry about it."  
  
Even with his head turned away, he can practically feel her gaze on him. "I won't if you won't. You're more than welcome here, John, and a little increase in my skills isn't going to change that."  
  
He smiles, even if she can't see it, and feels himself relax a little (when did he become so tense, anyway?).   
  
"So were you, um," he starts again, still watching the breeze shake the branches of the trees outside. "Planning to do anything else today? Anything I can help with? Because if not, I've got some stuff to do..."  
  
There's an empty moment, just long enough to, say, cock an eyebrow (at least the way he imagines her doing it), before John hears the book shut.  
  
"Yes, actually, I was thinking about doing some charms practice. Would you like to come?"  
  
Lately she's been working on a new and rather powerful spell that directly affects the caster, a quick trick to harden human skin - or place a barrier around it, John's not actually sure how it works - so that it becomes nearly invincible... temporarily, of course. It wears off within a few seconds at Rose's current level, barely long enough to test it, much less protect herself from anything, and it doesn't cover much area besides.  
  
Nonetheless, Rose is convinced it's worth the time it will take to master. Once they've relocated to the observatory and settled on the floor, she skims over the instructions again and readies her wand. Point it at the back of her left hand, concentrate, mouth a few words - and an almost imperceptible shimmer appears over her skin. She touches it carefully with her other hand and then quickly strikes it with her fingernails. The movement is so fast and so violent that John nearly cringes, but when she lifts up her hand again, it's perfectly clean - not a scratch in sight.  
  
Still, she frowns. "I don't think it worked for any of the rest of my hand. Just that one spot on the back."  
  
"But it _did_ work. That's still pretty good, isn't it?" John says. There's not much he can offer but moral support when it comes to things like this; the power of the spell comes from the caster, after all, and he can't magically make her able to focus her energy better.  
  
"Is it?" Rose returns. "What good is protecting two square inches of the back of my hand if the rest of it still gets mauled?"  
  
John leans back on his hands. "I don't know, but watching you do it, you're..."  
  
"I'm?"  
  
He grins. "You're downright  _charming_."  
  
It takes a moment for the look of distaste to appear on Rose's face, tinged at the edges with a hint of a smile. She grumbles something that might have been either a "good one" or a "hate you" as she prepares to cast again.  
  
"Can I feel it?" John asks, and once the spell has taken effect Rose stretches out her arm to him. He runs his fingers over her skin without truly touching her; the surface is hard, smooth, slightly colder than he'd expect. At the edge there's a line, not quite even, where the magic wears off and his fingers brush flesh again. And then, right under his fingertips, he can feel the spell begin to fade, melting out into the air until his hand is resting on her arm plain and simple.  
  
For a moment neither of them moves, John slowly shifting his fingers across that same inch of skin. Then Rose quickly flips her hand over so his is almost resting in hers, and before he can react, says in a fake courtly accent, "Why, Mr. Egbert, a pleasure to meet you too. Would you care for a dance?"  
  
John replies in the same voice, "Of course, Miss Lalonde. I am honored to make your acquaintance. Delighted, even."  
  
"One could even say..."  
  
"Don't. Don't say that."  
  
" _Enchanted_."  
  
John lets go of her hand in disgust, and Rose pulls it back with half a chuckle. She stretches her wrist a bit before starting her work again, and John takes the opportunity to ask, "So how far do you think you could take that?"  
  
"What do you mean?" Rose looks up, and John gestures at her skin, long returned to normal.   
  
"Like, how much could you get it to cover, and for how long?"  
  
She considers her hand, rubbing her knuckles gently. "Oh, I don't know. I can't imagine that anyone but the most advanced magic practitioners could even think to cover their whole bodies, or hold the spell for more than a number of seconds. I expect area and time involve a tradeoff, too. But something like... charming the whole hand for just long enough to reach into a fire and retrieve an object, or protecting the soles of one's feet from sharp ground underfoot - that should certainly be doable, with enough practice."  
  
That  _does_  sound useful, John thinks, watching her try again. Of course, he can already do something similar with the wind. It's hard to control air that tightly, to make it compact enough and in such a focused space that it can block solid objects with any precision - air is light and likes to move, and so requires constant vigilance to keep it from separating and freeing itself. It's not something most humans would be able to learn, and certainly not to his level of mastery. But he  _is_  something akin to a god. Rose is a mere human, somehow managing to achieve almost the same effect.  
  
Currently she's achieving that effect on a patch of skin higher up on her arm, testing it again with her fingernails. Her work is impeccable, but even if her arm goes untouched, the magic obviously is taking a toll on the rest of her body. Powerful spells require a lot of energy to cast, John recalls, and though Rose is quite gifted there’s still a limit to her strength.  
  
"Don't you think you should call it quits for a while?" he suggests as she wipes the sweat from her forehead with one sleeve. "You don't want to get too tired and risk doing it wrong or something. Those fingernails probably hurt."  
  
Rose sets her wand down. "Perhaps you’re right. As lovely as it would be to try out some healing magic, that's probably not the best way to go about it."  
  
"Heh. Probably not." John floats up into the middle of the room and stretches. "So, hey, if you just want to rest for a bit I can show you a new magic trick I learned last week! No physical activity involved."  
  
"Sure, why not? I could stand the break."  
  
When Rose takes the hand John offers to help her get to her feet, he can't help but add, "Why, Miss Lalonde, back so soon?"  
  
"Well, I must confess, Mr. Egbert, that I find your company quite..."  
  
"Magical?" John suggests.  
  
Rose smiles as he gently lets go and leads the way out the door. "Took the words right out of my mouth."


	21. Chapter 21

What always amazes Rose the most is how much she still doesn't  _know_.  
  
She's been studying sorcery for a while now, and every new manuscript she comes across teaches her one trick and informs her of the existence of another five. Certainly there's more magic in the world than one person could ever hope to perfect, but still... sometimes it seems limitless. Boundless. She could go on  _forever_. Especially if this new spell...  
  
Well, no, she shouldn't think about that right now. Like she told John, it's not going to transform her into some sort of master overnight. She has a long road ahead of her, and she's going to have to take it one step at a time... though a few shortcuts through the air with her flying familiar can't hurt too much.  
  
But witchcraft itself isn't the only thing she's still learning about. Every now and then John will casually say something that makes her forehead crease and cause her to rethink what she thought she knew about spirits. Sometimes she reads something that raises a question; sometimes she simply realizes she doesn't know how something works and becomes curious.  
  
Which is why she finds herself asking John one morning, "Can spirits die?"  
  
He looks at her across the foot or so of space that separates them. "That was out of the blue. I thought you already knew we're basically immortal?"  
  
"'Basically,'" Rose repeats, using the tip of one wand to draw crude swirls in the dirt. They had been reviewing an older, easy spell a while ago, but it had proved too monotonous for the both of them, and the practice had devolved into talking and watching the river flow by some yards in the distance. "So you'll exist until the end of time, no matter what?"  
  
"Well, that's not exactly..." John scratches his neck. "It's more of a conditional immortality, really."  
  
"I suspected as much," Rose says. "Complex forms of magic always seem to be accompanied by some sort of equally complicated terms."  
  
"Yeah, the rules do seem kind of... arbitrary, sometimes. But we are  _pretty_  much immortal. Spirits can die! Just... not easily. Like  _really_  not easily."  
  
Rose stretches her legs out. "Do tell."  
  
John seems to have to think for a moment, but when he speaks, he doesn't sound doubtful at all. "Well, first of all, it's a lot harder to kill us than it is to kill humans. You're all kind of... fragile. But since our bodies aren't quite the same, we can survive worse damage." He plucks at the grass next to him. "There are certain ways you have to do it. Like if you drove a knife through my chest right now - if somehow you actually managed to do that, which is hard enough! - I probably wouldn't actually die."  
  
"Even if it was a silver dagger?" Rose's sketch turns into the rough outline of a sword as she grins. "Or a stake through the heart? Or are you more of a holy water person?"  
  
"Har har, Rose. Not like that! It's more like..." John gestures vaguely with one hand. "I think it just has to be a really serious wound. The type of thing you  _can't_  recover from, you know? Like, put a gash in my neck and I'll probably bounce back eventually, but if you cut my head off there's nothing I can do. You'll never be able to cut my head off, by the way. I'm too fast."  
  
"You seem quite confident in these assertions."  
  
"Well, I'm still alive, aren't I?"  
  
She has to concede that point. He  _has_  lived for lifetimes upon lifetimes, probably, so who's to say he hasn't faced these kind of injuries in the past and remained here to tell the tale? Of course, he's not exactly forthcoming with personal examples, but maybe he's forgotten. What would even put a spirit in that kind of danger, anyway?  
  
Rose doesn't get to ask, because John goes on, "Then the other thing is that even if I do technically die, it's not permanent unless it meets certain conditions."  
  
"Conditions  _within_  conditions. Have I ever mentioned that my favorite part of magic is its simplicity?"  
  
John reaches over to pick up Rose's other wand in his left hand and carve his own line into her tiny patch of dirt. "This one's not that hard, though, just kind of... vague? My death would have to be either heroic or just to kill me for good. So if I went around tornado-ing villages for the fun of it and someone managed to kill me, that'd probably be it for me. Or if I died protecting you or something."  
  
Rose gives him a sharp look, needle tip still buried in the dirt.  
  
"It's not gonna happen!" He raises his hands defensively. "I just told you, we are so hard to kill. Besides, you hardly need me to protect you."  
  
"I already have once," Rose reminds him.  
  
"Well, okay, maybe I helped out, but  _you're_  the one who shot the cougar with your magic. I just helped you get away," John argues. "And you're only getting stronger. It's not like you're gonna need any knight in shining armor to keep you safe."  
  
Rose hums thoughtfully, brushing away her last drawing so her canvas is smooth again. How nice it would be to believe him, to believe in herself with that kind of confidence. But apart from scrapes here and there - accidents like the cougar incident that she can't say she'd like to repeat, even if they did fill her with a kind of adrenaline-infused excitement - it's not as if she's really tested her skills. Magic backfiring, standard household accidents, and the occasional large predator looming a little too close are the only threats to her here. So how would they know, really?

"You've got that scary look in your eyes," John says.  
  
"Just thinking."  
  
"That's what I'm worried about."  
  
The edges of Rose's lips twitch downwards, until she glances at John and sees that he's smiling.   
  
"What," she says, "you think I'm going to charge off into danger without you? Put your theory to the test?"  
  
"Well... I wouldn't put it past you, I guess, though I think you're usually smarter than that."  
  
"Thank you. I think." Rose taps her wand against the ground a few times, searching, not waiting, but John speaks first.  
  
"But... you wouldn't really, would you? Charge off into danger just to see if you could."  
  
Well, that's not what she was expecting. "But what use is all my newfound knowledge if it's never practically applied? How are we to know what dangers are surmountable, how much is possible, if we never put ourselves in a position to find out?"  
  
John kind of chuckles, unsure, and says, "Sometimes I can't tell when you're joking or not. It's becoming a problem."  
  
Rose only sighs, so John goes on, "But really. I don't think you want that? I think you kind of doubt that you're really capable of it yet, so you don't want to put yourself in undue danger where you think someone would have to protect you. But you also don't want to live a safe, comfy, boring life where you'll never get to test yourself. So you don't know  _what_  to do."  
  
That's  _really_  not what she was expecting, and for a moment Rose is stunned. John picks the oddest times to dust off the perceptive abilities he usually keeps buried under a thick layer of obliviousness.  
  
"There can be a fine line between cowardice and caution," she says slowly, "but it's folly to think life-threatening situations are desirable in and of themselves. That's not the kind of danger one should be seeking out. And yet..." She closes her eyes, listens to the sound of the river flowing by, shakes her head.  
  
"You think I'm right?" John ceased his doodling long ago and now sits staring at the trees across the river, or maybe the clouds just above them, so Rose's wand lies abandoned in the grass next to him. She considers reaching over to take it back.  
  
Considers, but doesn't move. "I think that's certainly an observation. I'm more concerned about why you think that. What gave you the impression I'd be so hesitant to rush out and prove myself if the occasion arose?"  
  
John shrugs. "I don’t know. I was just thinking about it, and it's strange, because I always kinda figured your hubris was off the charts. Because of how you acted when we first met, and because you always seem to have some trick or another up your sleeve. Because I think you don't like being wrong."  
  
Rose opens her mouth and then closes it again, waiting for the word she's sure is coming.  
  
"But-" there it is- "now I almost feel like I was wrong? Like maybe you're not all sure of yourself all the time, maybe you actually don't like yourself? You take risks, but you're not so brash as to expect they'll all work out."  
  
Rose snorts, fails to come up with a suitable response, and instead asks, "You were thinking about that? What brought on the sudden psychoanalysis?"  
  
"Psychoanalysis...? I don't know, I was just. Thinking, like I said. You train so hard, like you think you always need just a little more practice, and it makes me sad to think that  _you_  don't think you're good enough for things. Not just magic things, or even adventure things, but like... social things, too. Like you think no one would like you if you tried to make friends."  
  
He continues to gaze across the river, and Rose has to think for a while, chart out the conversation to figure out how they got here (and maybe how she can get out). What was once steady ground has just disappeared from underneath her, and numerous flying trips aside, she's still not used to that sensation.  
  
But John doesn't give her time to jump ship. "I'm not trying to like... insult you," he says, running a hand through his hair. "I'm just saying, sometimes I think you think there's nothing special about yourself. A-And it's not true, you know?"  
  
Rose wants to interrupt, try one last time to turn this mess of a discussion around, but she can see heat rising on his cheeks and hear a slight waver in his voice and something about her own heartbeat picking up stops her.   
  
"You... you know there's more to you than your skill with magic, right?" he goes on. "Even if you weren't a good witch, which you are, you're also a good person, a really good person, and..."  
  
He finally looks up at her and wow, when did he get this close? She wasn't so zoned in on him that she didn't notice him moving... was she?  
  
"I just... wanted you to know that," he finishes, though he doesn't look finished at all. Some sort of reply dances on the tip of Rose's tongue, trying to materialize into something coherent (and probably contrary), but before she can rein it in John leans forward and touches his lips to hers and then pulls away, tentatively, unsure.  
  
Rose blinks, and blinks again, and almost forgets what they were talking about. She has to work her mouth a few times before she manages to say, "You just... wanted me to know that. You just steered this whole conversation to here so you could tell me that?"  
  
John's brow furrows as he leans back. "What, are you mad?"  
  
"No, of course not." The way her heart is pounding and the slight tingling that she might just be imagining on her lips aren't bad, just... strange. Unfamiliar. "I'm... surprised, is all."  
  
"Well... don't be." John smiles, but it's weak. He thinks he's made a mistake. He thinks she thinks he shouldn't have done that.  
  
Rose doesn't want him to think that.  
  
She takes a breath, tries to will herself steady again. "As long as we're on the subject, then, may I have a turn?"  
  
"A... turn?"  
  
"You keep saying that I'm amazing on my own and I don't really need a familiar." Rose wraps a blade of grass around one finger, gently so as not to break it. "And you think I'm the one with confidence issues?"  
  
"Tha..." He sputters, and it's difficult not to look up to see his expression. "That's not the same thing. I'm a familiar, I'm not human."  
  
Rose almost laughs. "What's that got to do with it? When we met, you acted like you were  _above_  humans, and I suppose in some objective sense you are. You're practically a  _god_ , John. What in the world, or even out of it, would make you think your presence hasn't been integral to my development as a witch? And..." The grass breaks under her finger. Oops. Maybe that will distract him from noticing the blush she's failing to fight off as she goes on. "And my growth as a person."  
  
"It's..." Something in John's voice does make her look up this time. He's staring at his hand, raised in front of him. "I dunno, it's just that... it doesn't take that much talent to be a sky spirit, you know?" As his fingers twitch the wind swirls around his palm. "I've always had these powers, it's not like I worked for them like you did. And even though I'm thousands of years old I don't know all that much about humans or your society or magic or anything. Us spirits, we're just kind of... there."   
  
The air around him stops, and he's left flexing his fingers idly. "Humans are fascinating. They grow and change and lead such distinct lives and we're just... not like them."  
  
Rose waits a moment to speak. "John."  
  
He doesn't look at her, but he nearly jumps when she scoots closer to him and takes his hand in hers; his eyes stay fixed on where their skin touches, resolutely ignoring hers watching his face.  
  
"That may be the stupidest thing I've ever heard."  
  
"Wait, what?" That gets his attention. He looks up, confusion and maybe a bit of indignation washing away most of the blush on his cheeks.  
  
"A sky spirit who thinks he's somehow inferior to humankind? I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes." Rose runs her thumb over his skin, examines the rough edges of his fingernails (does he bite them?). "But I said it's my turn, so allow me to return the favor."  
  
She's not certain he's following, but he waits for her to collect her thoughts and say, carefully, deliberately: "Maybe when I first attempted summoning, what I wanted was a faceless creature of the deep to unquestioningly follow me. But not anymore. You have a personality too, John, a very distinct one, and equally fascinating. You're sweet, if a little tactless, and funny, and honest, and better company than most of the real humans I've met, to tell the truth."  
  
It takes her a few moments to shift her eyes back to John's face, but she's just in time to see him smile, half embarrassed but mostly just happy. "You really think so?"  
  
"I really do."  
  
"Well... well, good! Because that's what I think about you too. I mean, not the exact same thing, but like, that you're... smart, and pretty, and funny, and I... I like spending time with you. Y-you know what I mean?"  
  
Rose smiles. "I know what you mean."  
  
And she really does. A few months ago she would never have believed this, but even if it's the last thing she expected to happen today, this time - this time she's kind of okay with her plans changing. Definitely okay, she silently amends as John moves his hand to hold hers in return.


	22. Chapter 22

Time is really weird.  
  
John has always known this, of course; he knew it in the sky realm, though he rarely thought about it, and he realized it again when he was summoned. It was kind of a shock, coming back down to the human world for the first time in who knows how long, where he can watch seconds tick by on the hands of a clock like he used to watch buildings appear and crumble.  
  
But for some reason it's hitting him especially hard right now, as he thinks back over the summer, trying to deduce how long he and Rose have known each other. When you've lived for hundreds of years, a couple of weeks or months sure doesn't seem like it should be much. Or even when you've lived only eighteen years, one season can't be such a long time. That old human adage says that "time flies," and certainly it has been flying – that's a sensation John is very familiar with, after all – but he's also struck with the simultaneous sense that he's been here forever.  
  
A few months ago, maybe, he wouldn't have thought he could come to like Rose. A few weeks ago he probably hoped they'd remain friends for the duration of her life, some variety of comfortable companionship but always at arm's length. And now... well. This new feeling is different, but a good kind of different. Sort of exciting. Something he wasn't expecting until very recently, something that makes him eagerly count the hours until he can see her again.  
  
Weird.  
  
He kind of wants to mention it to Rose, sometime, when she's not too busy. He doesn't want to distract her too much; it feels like they've been talking a lot recently, and he's starting to worry that it's going to get on her nerves. She says she's working on something important, after all. But she never seems angry about it. She did promise that one time to be more up front about her emotions, and really, the frequency of her smiles and the way she's taken to starting conversations about things that aren't magic should be good signs, shouldn't they?  
  
She raises her eyes from the plant she's been examining. "What do you mean, how do I experience time? Presumably I experience it the same way you or anyone else does. Second by second."  
  
John groans. "I don't even know if that was supposed to be a joke, but you  _know_  it's not what I meant."  
  
"I know, yes." One of Rose's fingertips gently prods at a small flower at the tip of a long stalk. "But I don't know what you want me to say. Is there a way to qualitatively explain time? Is there a passage of time that anyone feels is objectively normal, to which we could compare?"  
  
"I mean, just..." John floats a few inches closer to the ground. "Sometimes it feels really fast, and sometimes things drag on forever. Is that normal? To you?"  
  
Rose snaps her book shut and stands up. "To most humans, yes, I believe it is. Is that normal to you?"  
  
John shrugs slowly. "I guess. I mean, that's what it feels like now. But I don't think that's how it was before."  
  
"Well, I'm not surprised. You have mentioned that things are different for you now."  
  
Without waiting for a reply, Rose moves on through the forest, careful not to let her dress get snagged on any thorny bushes. Luckily, they're not very deep in, so the underbrush is sparse and it's easy to identify the plants in Rose's potion book, the one she's been combing through lately with new resolve.  
  
John follows, the tail of his hood wrapped around one hand to avoid stray branches. Pretty soon Rose stops again, comparing some pinecones or spruce cones or whatever to a picture in her book. They've already been out here for a while; if he can't think of anything interesting to talk about while they work, this really  _could_  drag on forever.  
  
"So, uh, this thing we're looking for," John says, and waits for Rose to show she's listening before he keeps talking. "Remind me again what it's for?"  
  
Rose simply says, "A new spell," and reaches out to touch the prickly side of one of the cones. John rolls his eyes. He knew  _that_  much. And the stuff she's looking at now isn't even related to it! He remembers her describing it to him in careful detail, even writing down some of the main features so he would have an easier time searching. In the end it didn't really help, since he still hasn't found it anywhere he's looked in the foothills or down the river, but it sure did ensconce the mental image into his mind, and it definitely wasn't a pinecone.  
  
"Okay, what  _kind_  of spell?" he tries instead. "Is it a potion?"  
  
"No, actually." Rose flips a few pages in her book to examine another diagram.   
  
All right, if she wants to play 20 Questions, that's fine with him. He's got all day.   
  
"But it's really so important that we can't just go without? I mean, I've looked really carefully through this forest, I don't think you're going to find it by just walking in."  
  
"I am aware of that." Rose marks her page and shuts the book again. "I was hoping that familiarizing myself with some of the other plants in this area might help me find a substitute, or even an alternative way to get the herb the spell originally called for. If we could find something similar enough in structure and properties to stand in, then maybe..."  
  
Her voice has lowered almost to a mumble, the one John knows all too well as her talking-to-herself tone. He gives up on listening and instead looks around, and immediately knows exactly where they are right now - well, maybe not  _exactly_ , but close. He  _has_  been looking really carefully, after all. At least they won't be getting lost today.  
  
Still, at the rate they're going, they won't be going  _home_  today. Rose continues to examine plenty of plants that obviously aren't the one she wants, comparing things to her book and occasionally even scribbling down a note or two in the margins.  
  
After a few minutes, John tries again: "You're sure going to a lot of trouble for this, though. So you must really need it, right?"  
  
Rose looks at him briefly but doesn't respond. Fine, he'll take that as a yes. It's kind of annoying, the way she just says nothing if she thinks the answer is obvious, but he knows she wouldn't let him bark up the wrong tree for too long.  
  
Does she not want him to know what it's for? Is it supposed to be some kind of secret? If it is, that just makes him more curious. He thinks harder. What would Rose be so intent on completing that she'd be willing to risk making substitutions in the formula, knowing that the wrong choice can have drastic consequences...?  
  
It must be something powerful, that's for sure. Rose doesn't bother too much with things beneath her ability. She practices enough to keep her skills sharp and not forget the basics, but other than that it's not like she would spend entire days working on an old, unimportant spell when she could be learning something new.  
  
So what's new and important? Something to do with her mom? She has been expressing a little more interest in her mother's work lately, though John suspects it's not entirely selfless curiosity. But no, she wouldn't need something like this for something like that. He wouldn't put it past Rose to concoct some ridiculous spell to tell her what Roxy is up to when she could always just  _ask_ , but...  
  
Something powerful. Something interesting. So interesting she's willing to spend all her time working on it, gathering supplies, reading in the study... reading that new book. That new book-  
  
_"It might be able to help me with the fire problem."_  
  
The fire! She  _had_  been looking into some way to stop it. Some way to make herself stronger. Of course Rose would devote herself fully to something like that. He had almost forgotten, what with how she's so cagey about things and in the wake of... everything that's happened lately. But that has to be it.  
  
Just as he's about to ask if he's right, she moves on again, pushing some low branches aside to step around a tree. Well, she doesn't really seem to want to talk about it right now. Maybe he'll just wait until later.  
  
The sun is high overhead when she decides it's time for a break. "A short trip into the woods," yeah right. They've been out here for hours... probably. That time thing again, ugh.  
  
Rose finds a nice log, mossy but dry, and brushes some pine needles off its surface before she sits down. For a moment John continues to hover a few feet away, and then slowly floats down next to her. He's found that she's actually quite amenable to pressing up close to him when he stays within her reach, and he's... well, he's pretty amenable to that too.  
  
After a few minutes and a few sips of water, her voice breaks through the quiet birdsong that had been serving as their only backdrop.   
  
"So time is a force just as mysterious and uncontrollable to you sky spirits, too."  
  
"Uh... yeah?"  
  
Rose rubs her chin gently. "Are there spirits who dabble in the flow of time?"  
  
"Probably?"  
  
"Probably?" she repeats.  
  
"I mean, I can't think of any spirits I would call time spirits, but theoretically I don't see why there couldn't be one... I kind of thought there was a spirit for everything."  
  
"You don't know?" Rose raises one eyebrow, more skeptical than curious.  
  
John lightly bumps her shoulder with his. "Hey, weather patterns don't really care about time. I told you, as hard as it may be to believe, I don't know everything."  
  
"Oh, I'm willing to believe that," Rose says, smiling as she takes another drink. A few more minutes, maybe, pass in near-silence. John considers asking again what Rose is up to, then doesn't.  
  
Luckily, she seems to be feeling more talkative herself now. "Well, as long as you don't know everything..." she starts, and pauses. "...You said a little while ago that you're different from humans. For what it's worth, I think you're wrong."  
  
"What? Rose, you know I'm a spi-"  
  
"Yes, I know full well that you're a spirit. But the conviction that spirits and humans are fundamentally unalike, at least in this form of existence... it doesn't ring true." Rose bends down to examine some small flowers by her feet. "Even if your appearance is to some degree fabricated, you  _act_  human. Your demeanor in general, the way you interact with people, for the most part even the way you seem to think. And look at your name. What kind of name is 'John' for a demigod?"  
  
John crosses his arms over his chest. "Hey, demigods are demigods. We can name ourselves whatever we want."  
  
"So you chose one of the most common human names in the English language?"  
  
She looks up at him. He just sticks his tongue out at her.   
  
"I'm only saying it's interesting," Rose says as she straightens back up. "When one thinks of gods and spirits one usually thinks of something mighty, obscure, out of the realm of human reach, and yet you're surprisingly..."  
  
"Friendly."  
  
"Surprisingly..."  
  
"Handsome. Generous. Awesome."  
  
"...Accessible."  
  
John wiggles his eyebrows. "You can  _access_  me any time you want."  
  
"Stop," Rose says, but she's smiling.   
  
He waits a little before saying, "You know I'm not _really_  human, though, right? Like, all that psychological stuff aside, most humans can't turn into air."  
  
"Mmm." Rose seems to consider that, staring past the trees in front of them. "But your human body, when you materialize it, is essentially that of a biological human male, correct? Just one that can sublimate, and produces its own form of energy."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"I wonder if that's possible for a human to achieve using magic. To turn a physically solid body into air... well, technically you turn air into a solid body, but I presume the process is fundamentally the same." She taps her fingers against her leg, and John is torn between a sigh and a smile - now that she's started, who knows how long it'll be before she stops?  
  
"I'm fairly certain the compounds that make up the human body aren't found in the wind. Unless you become a special form of air with a unique chemical makeup, it defies scientific explanation."  
  
John leans back, resting his palms against the empty air behind him. "Well, that's kind of the point of being supernatural, isn't it? I'm just made of magic. Pure wizard, right here."  
  
Rose finally meets his gaze, obviously fighting back a grin. "Oh, of course. Surely the only rationalization necessary." After a long moment she glances up and says, "Did you know your eyes really do match the color of the sky?"  
  
"I've been told, yeah." Just part and parcel of the whole weather god thing, he supposes. At least they stay in the blue-gray range and don't go wild at sunset.  
  
Rose is still looking at him, and he suddenly has the urge to duck away and focus on something else. That's so not fair. He barely even has to blink, technically, so why does she get the whole steely unnerving gaze thing and all he gets is this weird fluttering in his stomach?  
  
He swallows and says, "Did you know that you just have really pretty eyes? I don't know if they're the color of anything, but..."  
  
"Always the romantic," Rose says.  
  
"I try."  
  
The corner of her lips twitches, and John starts to feel like he's missing something. Is there a cue she's waiting for him to pick up on? He's not all that familiar with Weird Human Romance, so he's not entirely certain what her expectations are, but so far they've seemed to be doing fine. At least, he thinks the fact that they've kissed each other a number of times now means something is right... it certainly feels right to him.  
  
They're sitting very close, close enough that when Rose twists her body slightly she can easily wrap her arms around his neck. He simply lets his forehead rest against hers and contemplates the way his heartbeat just sped up.   
  
When she moves he doesn't know if it's because she's tired of waiting or if it's just something she finally resolved to do, but he decides it doesn't matter as she tilts her head so their noses brush and then presses her lips to his. Almost on its own, his arm curls around her waist to nudge her closer as he kisses her back.  
  
At least, until she pulls away and inhales sharply. John's expression flickers between confused and apologetic. "Right, I kind of forgot humans have to breathe pretty often..."  
  
"I'm sorry if my paltry human lung capacity is ruining the moment for you."  
  
"That's not what I-"  
  
This time he's interrupted by her finger on his lips. "Then don't make me waste my breath," she says, and lets her finger slip away to replace it with her mouth again. John makes no objection, and no attempt to stop her from urging his lips apart, and no move to push her away as she presses herself up against him.  
  
He can tell that it's all she can do to get enough air between kisses and tries to give her the space she needs, but the feel of her tongue against his own is dizzying, if uncoordinated, and the heat in his face is making everything hazy. Really, he has no idea what he's doing, and he gets the feeling she doesn't either, and he probably sucks at this, but right now he doesn't really care. She doesn't seem to either, if the way her fingers cling to the fabric of his shirt is any indication.  
  
Eventually she's forced to pull away, slowly, languidly almost, and he opens his eyes a little too fast because he wants to see that look she always has on her face whenever they're this close. He doesn't know what to call it, exactly, but it makes him feel warm and a little fuzzy and man he hopes she's as happy about all this as he is.  
  
She doesn't move right away, putting only a little distance between their bodies and keeping her arms wrapped firmly around his neck. It's constricting, but almost... comfortable? Yeah. Not so bad, as far as cramped spaces go.  
  
Finally she sighs, but he thinks it's kind of a fond sigh, not a frustrated one, so he lets her unwind her arms and move back along the log.   
  
"I hadn't intended to stop for this long," she says with a small cough, still a fair amount of color tinging her cheeks. Is she... embarrassed? He doesn't really see what there is to feel awkward about, but it's... sort of cute. Who knew it would be so easy to fluster Rose Lalonde?  
  
Honestly, he'd be content to stay here for another hour or two, but as always it seems she has work to do.  
  
"Anyway," she says as she stands up, only a tad unsteadily, "we still haven't found what we're here for. Let's keep moving."  
  
John's own sigh is maybe half frustration... but also half fondness, and he smiles as he floats up to follow her.


	23. Chapter 23

"Yes, that's good. Thank you."  
  
Rose accepts the parcel from the woman on the other side of the counter and turns to leave with no further conversation. As she steps back outside, she shifts the contents of her shoulder bag to find a place for the new package, careful not to upset any of the bottles or jars inside.  
  
It's still early afternoon and she's already accomplished most of what she wanted to get done today. She runs through her mental checklist: picked up the groceries, check. Picked up whatever secret science stuff (and alcohol) her mom wanted her to get, check. Purchased some new balls of yarn and some thread to fix a few small tears in her clothing, check. Skimmed through the shop that occasionally gets interesting books in stock; found nothing worth buying, but check.  
  
All that's left, then, is looking for a few items of her own, more of the magical than domestic persuasion. She has the list in her pocket, scribbled on a wrinkled scrap of paper, but she doubts she'll need it. She's sure she has it memorized by now.   
  
Her bag bumps into her side as she sets off down the street, heavy and unwieldy packed with this many supplies. It's not uncommon for her to come back from her trips loaded with so much; after all, when you live away from town, logic dictates that you run as many errands as you can at once so you don't have to make the inconvenient trek through the woods every few days. So she's used to it. She can handle it.  
  
Still, this is one of those times when having a familiar with her really would help. She and John could split the bags between them, and then maybe she wouldn't be stuck with this ache in her shoulder. And she hasn't even started home yet... She shifts the strap against her shirt, thinking maybe it's time to switch the bag to her other side.  
  
Since John is not with her this time, she's just going to have to bear it. Sometimes they make the trip together, but he's used to her needing to run routine errands and going without him. No use dragging him around for hours just to buy some milk. So this morning she left him behind to work on his "magic" tricks, or look for potion supplies, or whatever it is he does when he's alone.  
  
There's no harm in pretending this is just one of those standard supply runs. After all, she  _is_  picking up some things for her mom and for the household. What she does on the side is no one else's business anyway.  
  
It reminds her a little of her school days, coming into town like this and adamantly telling herself that her mom and her teacher and her classmates have no right asking her where she goes between the end of classes and starting for home. Not that anyone  _was_  asking, but. A part of her had always worked up some unnecessary bit of defiance in case anyone ever told her to stop looking around the sketchy bookstores, or not to go visiting the caravan's camp so often.  
  
Rose stops outside the shop she needs. Why is she even thinking about this? Those days are long over. She has other things she needs to focus on.  
  
It's warm inside the store, despite the cold glint of steel all around her. In the past Rose has had little need to visit any blacksmiths, much less ones who specialize in blades. The Lalondes have all the sharp edges they need lying around their house already, from kitchen knives to the wood-chopping hatchet, and on the rare occasion anything needs to be replaced Rose's mother usually handles it. It seems like a dangerous place for a child alone, after all, with swords and axes, both decorative and functional, covering the walls and display racks.   
  
Nonetheless, Rose is somewhat familiar with the smith, if only because his younger brother went to school with her. They didn't talk much; despite his propensity for rambling, he was almost as aloof as she was, even if his detachment was a little more affected and defensive than hers. So with little reason to interact outside the classroom, they simply didn't, and now she only runs into him on the streets once every couple months.  
  
More memories. Wonderful. But that's not why she's here. Gingerly making her way to the back of the store, past the tips of blades and a few jutting wood handles - honestly, a little more organization wouldn't kill them, and may prevent them from accidentally killing someone else - she stops at the counter and looks at the door on the other side.  
  
It's cracked open enough for her to see a bright glow beyond, and hear the unmistakable sound of steel brushing against a rough surface. After she knocks on the counter a few times, a shadow darkens the doorway and then a callused hand pushes the door open.  
  
"Oh," the blacksmith says when he sees Rose. He disappears back into his work room before returning with a towel in one hand and a thin object in the other, shutting the door behind him with his shoulder.  
  
"Hot in there," he explains as he sets the item on the counter. Rose reaches out to touch it, casting a quick glance at the man, who nods.  
  
The handle fits almost perfectly in her palm. The smooth wood is dark brown and polished to a sheen; after tracing a finger along it, she carefully removes the sheath to reveal a silver blade not much longer than the handle, impeccably clean but for the symbols engraved along the dull edge.  
  
Obtaining a dagger like this would be one thing, not particularly difficult even; a good kitchen knife could substitute if the size and shape wasn't too important. But the inscription could be made only by a practiced hand, someone with far more experience in carving metal than Rose has.   
  
Thus, she had no recourse but to put in an order in town. Luckily Dirk is not the judging type; even if he was unable to read the series of characters Rose had carefully written out for him with her sketch, it's not much of a leap to assume a dagger with an inscription like this is for magical purposes rather than more innocuous ones. But he accepted the order with the implicit agreement that he wouldn't go starting any witch hunts, and he's engraved the words faithfully, clean-cut and beautiful against the spotless metal.  
  
"That what you wanted?" he asks, and Rose finally looks up at him. His blonde hair is slicked back under his usual hat, and his eyes are always hidden behind dark glasses - he claims it's because the forges he works with are too bright for his sensitive eyes, but Rose has never bought that any more than she bought his brother's weak excuses either.  
  
"Exactly so," she says, sliding the blade back into its sheath before reaching for the pouch that contains her money. "I believe I still owe you the other half of the fee?"  
  
Once the money is in his hands and a few more words are exchanged, Rose has no reason to linger, so she thanks him and makes her way to the door. By the time she leaves the building, Dirk has disappeared back to his workshop.  
  
Somewhat of an odd man, she thinks, but one she's grateful for right now. His work is finely done and he hasn't pried at all. Getting the supplies she needs could have been much more difficult.  
  
She weighs the dagger in her hand one more time before stowing it, too, in her bag. She likes the feel of it; maybe she could learn to use it as a backup weapon. Its primary purpose is not going to be cutting, true, but it is a real blade, sharp enough to slice.   
  
The trek through town is quick enough, even with the bag dragging her down and a few more brief stops, and soon Rose is back in the forest on the quiet road home. As she enters the cover of trees she notes that some have started to change colors. Pockets of yellow and orange stand out among the evergreens, and every now and then a dried leaf drifts down into her path.   
  
She frowns at the redder colors. Lately it seems like the whole world is mocking her, the imagery creeping out of the scenery and bubbling up onto reflective surfaces like it belongs there, immutable.  
  
But again. There's no reason for her to dwell on this. All the new oranges mean is that autumn is coming. It's going to get colder soon; they should be thinking about stocking up on firewood and blankets, just in case.  
  
Besides, there's plenty more positive things she could be contemplating. Like how the seasons aren't the only thing that time has been changing lately. John seems to take no issue with how their relationship has evolved over the past few weeks, if his willingness to spend their spare time in close contact means anything, and for her part Rose is quite enjoying that contact.  
  
She's learned quickly that when he gets too into something he has a tendency to forget he has to anchor himself to the ground. More than once she's had to pull him against her when he seems to forget gravity is a thing that's supposed to exist, even when her arms are wrapped around him already. Eventually she took to sitting on his lap, only to find that he's fully capable of floating with her on his knees.   
  
(One well-placed comment about "unintentional rising in the heat of the moment" is all it takes to get him to pay a little more attention. It also gets a lot of sputtering and flushing and a few hours in which he nearly refuses to look at her.)  
  
She goes on for quite a few steps before realizing she's smiling at the air in front of her. But there's no one there to see, no one to question what or who she's thinking about so absently, so she doesn't bother forcing her mouth back into a straight line.  
  
No, today she's just going to enjoy a quiet walk home on a nice day and let herself be glad that someone will be waiting for her when she arrives.


	24. Chapter 24

By the middle of the day, rain is dripping down the windowpanes and John hasn't seen Rose in quite a while. They did talk in the morning, of course, but even then it was already sprinkling; the dark clouds blowing in promised a heavier downpour later, and Rose suggested they stay indoors today.  
  
A few months ago, John thinks, it would have made him uneasy, being locked up inside for hours without even a cracked window to get the air moving. But he's gotten used to it, a little. It's not so bad to just chill out in Rose's house, watching the rain come down from the dry side of the window, where he doesn't have to deflect it with the wind constantly to avoid getting wet.   
  
And anyway, he could go out if he wanted - it's not like she ordered him to stay here. In fact, she didn't tell him much of anything. Just another day where she has something else to attend to and suggested he feel free to pursue any of his own interests. (As long as those interests aren't following her around, was the implication, but that's okay. He has other things to do now.)  
  
The living room is deserted when Rose is busy and her mom is away doing... whatever she does, so John settles just over the couch with a deck of cards. Some of his favorite tricks are card tricks, and if he ever wants to seriously impress Rose with his skills, he's going to have to work pretty hard at them!  
  
He starts by going over some basic ones that he's already showed her, but as he runs through the motions for the third time, he begins to understand how Rose feels about simple magic spells. Once you've got it down, practicing becomes more spacing out than anything. He supposes it's a good sign if you can do something so well you don't even need to think about it, but... it would be far more interesting to actually  _use_  the trick, show it to someone, than do it over and over in an empty room alone. He can't ask himself if this is his card, can he?  
  
As he shuffles the cards again, he gazes at the dull gray scene out the window. Where is Rose, anyway?  
  
It's not that he minds being left alone. Rose is a fairly introverted person, after all; if she wants to spend some time by herself now and then, he won't tell her not to. But lately "now and then" is starting to feel like "most of the time," and he's beginning to get worried.  
  
He starts laying out the cards in the air for a game of solitaire, trying to remember the setup Rose had showed him. It was a simple enough game, he recalls, so holding up all the cards while he plays it shouldn't be that much of a challenge.  
  
Maybe Rose hasn't been retreating from him as much as he thinks. Maybe it's mostly in his head? Because they  _have_  been getting a lot closer recently, and he's been happy to spend so much of his time with her. So maybe it just  _feels_  like she's gone a lot because he wishes she were around more?  
  
He sets aside an ace and frowns. Psychology isn't really his thing; better to leave all that to Rose. All he's sure of is that she seems even more preoccupied than usual lately, and he wishes she'd tell him why. He  _is_  her familiar; maybe he can help.  
  
Or, well, he's her familiar but he's also her friend, and... and something other than that, too? She's never put a word to it, and neither has he - he's not entirely certain what words to try, since this is nowhere close to his area of expertise - but that's okay. For now it doesn't really matter what they should call it; he's happy just to let it happen. It's not exactly part of a familiar's job description, but there's no harm in coloring a little outside the lines, is there?  
  
The card under his fingers is awfully familiar, and he stops as he realizes he's flipped through the deck twice now without making a move. And the very next card is one he could use!  
  
Just when John is starting to pay a proper amount of attention to the game, a clattering from nearby distracts him. Leaving his cards in midair, he drifts past the couch and over to the back door, where Rose is standing, brushing dirt or raindrops or something off her dress. She only glances up at him briefly before knocking her shoes against the ground a few times to dislodge some mud, shutting the door, and heading to the stairs.  
  
"What's that? A spade?" John asks as his eyes finally light on the object in her hand. It looks old, spotted both by ancient dirt and bits of cobwebs. "Where did that come from?"  
  
Rose glances at him again. She doesn't seem to be all that wet, considering how long it's been raining.  
  
"The shed out beside the house," she says.  
  
"Oh, that old thing?" John has seen it before, of course, but he's never paid much attention to it. It looks old too, like it hasn't been used in years, and Rose and her mom never open the weathered door, so he figured it's nothing important. "There's stuff in there?"  
  
"Yes," Rose says, stopping on the first step of the stairs. "Old tools, mostly. When I was young my mother entertained some thoughts of keeping a garden and growing our own vegetables, but evidently that didn't pan out. The equipment has been all but abandoned."  
  
Well, that explains a lot of things. "So, what, you're reviving that old dream? Gonna grow your own pumpkins?"  
  
"Hardly." Rose continues up the steps, calling back, "It's just another tool for a future project," before she disappears. John tilts his head, then shrugs and returns to his game.  
  
The next time he sees the spade it's been cleaned off, as much as it can be, anyway; patches of dirt and rust still cling to the metal, but it's more silver than muddy brown-gray now, glinting on the observatory floor with Rose's other supplies. He looks at some of the other objects that he thinks have been newly placed in the pile - extra cups, unused colored candles, some chalk or something - but can't guess at what she wants them for. They're all pretty standard tools, honestly, for a normal household as well as a witch's.  
  
Well, he'll probably find out eventually, so there's no point in worrying about it now. Rose may like her secretive persona, or have trouble letting others in when it comes to things like this, but John doubts she's going to keep whatever it is a secret forever - not when she's so eager to put her skills to the test. He can wait until she's ready to talk... probably.  
  
So for now he decides he's happy just to follow her instructions and help her when he can, and swishes out the door in a gust of wind to join her downstairs almost before she calls.


	25. Chapter 25

Rose wakes to darkness.  
  
It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust, in which time, surrounded by nothingness, she's aware only of her heart beating too fast and sweat on her forehead. As she tries to even out her breathing she brushes her bangs away from her eyes and spreads out her palm above them; not too hot, or at least she doesn't think so. But the anxiousness coiling in the pit of her stomach makes her feel sick.  
  
_It was just a dream_ , she reminds herself, staring at the cracks around the window curtains. Slowly her room comes into focus in the dim light; the sky must be clear. The moon and stars are out.  
  
She considers lying down again, but the thought of sleep isn't alluring. Neither is sitting here alone in the dark, though, nor turning on a light.  
  
The blankets pool and crease around her as she pulls her knees to her chest and runs a hand through her hair. She is far too old to go crying to her mother over nightmares. (She has always been far too old for that, when half the time her mother was passed out drunk and wouldn't wake up to comfort her.) And yet...  
  
Already feeling ashamed, she whispers, "John?"  
  
Nothing happens. She thinks maybe she should take it as a sign to leave well alone enough and go back to sleep, but regardless of what she  _thinks_  the empty room makes her uneasy.  
  
"John?" she tries again, a little louder, and there - the curtains swish, and a faint, faint blue glow materializes into his body, floating above the foot of her bed.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
His voice is too loud for the night, otherwise unbroken by noise, but Rose can't bring herself to mind.  
  
"Rose?" he says when she fails to respond. He watches her curiously as he drifts down to sit right above the bed. "Are you okay?"  
  
She clears her throat. "Yes, I'm fine. Sorry."  
  
"Why did you call me?"  
  
"I..." Rose runs her tongue over her lips, but her mouth is dry and words are not forthcoming. "I just wanted to talk."  
  
"At three in the morning?" John seems confused but not concerned, and Rose feels herself relax a little. It isn't a big deal. Things are already going back to normal.  
  
"Yes. I had a dream."  
  
In the darkness she can barely see John's eyebrows rise; he pulls off his shoes and drops them unceremoniously over the edge of the bed, where they thump against the floorboards.  
  
"Like a prophetic dream?" he asks as he half-crawls, half-floats over to sit beside her against the headboard.  
  
"Prophetic dream?"  
  
"Yeah, like... seeing the future in your sleep or something?"  
  
Rose runs her fingers over the creases in the sheets covering her knees. "I wouldn't know; I don't yet have the future to compare it to."  
  
John snorts. "Okay, fair. What was the dream?"  
  
She pauses again before admitting, "This is the second time, actually. On its own it would be less than troubling; I could easily explain it as a subconscious replication of what's been on my mind lately, which my dreaming brain has incorporated into m-"  
  
"Rose."  
  
"...Yes, well. Even repeated it could be my subconscious, but this time was, as far as I can remember, an exact replay of the last one. They were both about the fire."  
  
"The fire?" John seems to have to think about it. "Like, your vision of the forest being on fire?"  
  
"Yes." Rose swallows, reconsiders what to say. "Like I said, it shouldn't be that surprising when you consider that I've seen it by scrying, over and over. But this isn't just a repeat of what I've seen in mirrors and glass balls. It's like... a different take on the same scene."  
  
John is stretched out next to her, propped on his elbow with one leg bent at the knee. "What's different about it?"  
  
Now Rose has to think for a moment, conjure up the images again. She wishes it weren't so easy.  
  
"...What I see when I scry is very limited, but mostly concrete. If you ignore the fact that the picture may waver and such, you can be relatively certain that there  _is_  a picture there, something you could just as easily have seen - may still see in the future, in fact - with your own eyes. But the dreams..."  
  
She pauses, runs her fingers over the sheets beneath her hand again, clenches her fist so she'll stop doing that. "They're dreamlike, of course. Vague. Sometimes an image, sometimes more of a sequence of ideas. They follow their own logic that makes sense at the time, but upon closer inspection from the waking world, is very hard to follow."  
  
John tilts his head slightly. "Really? That's weird."  
  
"It is?" Rose looks at him for a long moment, and then asks, "Have you never dreamed?"  
  
"Nope." He gives as much of a shrug as he can with his weight on his arm. "I don't really sleep, remember? But it sort of seems like... I don't know, a little bit like the feeling of transitioning between realms, maybe. My memories of the Sky are definitely there, but they're hazy, and hard to describe when I'm down here. So I think I might get it, kind of."  
  
Rose hums, almost distracted. That's certainly interesting... but not what they're here to talk about.  
  
"So you understand when I say the dreams carry a certain sense of reality, but tinged enough with the unfamiliar that you could doubt them."  
  
"Yeah, I guess."  
  
As they've been speaking John has slid down to mostly lay on the bed, only his head propped up on a pillow, and when Rose turns to look down at him he moves his arm, an invitation. Almost reluctantly she lies back down next to him and immediately he pulls her closer. She doesn't object, just continues talking.  
  
"It's still very unclear what starts the fire, but in my dreams I keep seeing it spreading, almost as if I'm watching from the air. When I look at it I get this odd sensation, like... like I'm both drawn to it and horrified of it. I feel like it's connected to me, but I also want to run away, and I end up feeling stuck until I wake up. It goes on for an agonizingly long time."  
  
One of John's hands brushes her shoulder. The uncomfortable, slow-motion sensation from her dream world is entirely gone now, but the image remains, bright behind her eyelids and just as haunting.  
  
"That feeling is all that lingers. No information, nothing useful. Just a persistent dread. It's frustrating."  
  
John snorts; Rose can feel the air against the top of her head. "Not fear or anything, just frustration because the dreams are useless. That's so like you."  
  
"Well, what else did you expect?" she says, too tired to come up with a proper retort. It seems whatever rush of adrenaline was keeping her up is wearing out now.  
  
She doesn't want to sleep, though, not yet, so after a bit of silence, she goes on. "I didn't know that prophetic dreams were possible without some sort of intentional stimulation. Sort of like lucid dreaming. You have to prepare for it if you really want it to work."  
  
"Some witches get them," John replies. "Just, like. Intuitive knowledge? I think it comes from scrying a lot and becoming more in tune with the magical realms or whatever. It starts to come to you before you seek it out." He pauses, then adds, "See, I told you this seeing stuff suits you."  
  
"Mm." Rose nuzzles the fabric of his hood bunched around his collar, already beginning to forget. Somehow he makes the bed so much warmer, and he's not as comfortable as a pillow but his hand rubbing her back is twice as comforting.  
  
"John?" she says quietly after a few minutes, and feels his chest reverberate as he hums a reply. "Will you stay for a while? You can go back to whatever I interrupted you from later, just... wait until I fall asleep?"  
  
"Of course." He presses his lips lightly to her forehead, and she ends up dozing off to his fingers massaging slow circles down her spine.


	26. Chapter 26

The next time Rose wakes up is comparatively much nicer.  
  
Perhaps compared to any time she's woken up before, because as she comes into consciousness the first thing she's aware of is arms wrapped tightly around her. John looks for all the world to be asleep, his mouth slightly open and his glasses slipping down his nose. When Rose pushes them back up his eyes open slowly but easily, like he's fully rested and alert already.  
  
"Oh, you're awake," he says, making no attempt to move or push Rose off from where she's still lying against his shoulder. "Good morning."  
  
"A good morning indeed," Rose replies, placing a hand on his arm. "What a gentleman. Explicit permission to leave, yet still here when I wake up."  
  
"Well you were like, kind of on top of me. You probably would have woken up if I'd moved."  
  
Rose leans up to brush her nose against his. "That's awfully observant  _and_  considerate of you. Color me impressed."  
  
"Oh, ha ha, he does me a favor so I'm going to make fun of him," John says, but leans in further to give her a quick peck on the lips. Rose smiles and returns the gesture with another kiss. And another, a little less quick. And another. And...  
  
...then he disappears from out from under her and she falls face-first into the pillows. Not a moment later, footsteps sound outside her door and she hears her mother call, "Rose?"  
  
Rose takes a moment to gather herself. "Yes?"  
  
"It looks like we're runnin' a li'l low on firewood. I'm p busy today, so could you go out and restock soon?"  
  
Rose turns over, eyes still closed. "Okay. I'll do it after breakfast."  
  
"Great, thanks sweetie!"  
  
The footsteps recede, and Rose covers her eyes with one arm, stifling a groan. When she looks up again, blinking blurrily against the light, John is floating leisurely in the middle of the room.  
  
"Well," Rose says. "So much for being a gentlemanly pillow."  
  
He completely ignores the look she gives him. "Did you want your mom to catch us? And in your  _bed_?" At least he has the decency to blush a little. "Anyway, you were already awake this time."  
  
"How about you just get back down here so we can pick up where we left off."  
  
"How about nope! You heard her, we have to get that firewood." Rose makes a sound somewhere between a growl and a grumble, and John adds, "It's not like we won't have plenty of time for that later." But as soon as the words have left his mouth he flushes again, quickly spits out, "Call me when you're ready to go," and vanishes.  
  
With John gone, Rose has little else to do but get dressed and make herself breakfast. By the time she gets downstairs her mother is already gone - disappeared to her lab, probably. Rose leans against the window frame, looking outside while she leisurely drinks her juice. At least it's a relatively nice day. Best to get that firewood now, before the weather sours and the temperature drops any further. Numb hands and an axe are not a good combination.  
  
Only after she's finished eating and ascertained for herself that the woodpile is, in fact, getting too low to ignore, does Rose call for John. He reappears in a gust of wind that makes her dress ripple around her ankles.  
  
"So, uh, what exactly are we doing?" he asks, following a few paces behind her as she pulls on her gloves and steps outside.  
  
"Honestly, it's little more than routine chores," Rose says. "You don't have to tag along if you don't want to."  
  
John says immediately, "I want to!" and Rose doesn't need to turn around to imagine the blushing that's probably accompanying his nervous chuckle. He hastily adds, "Besides, I can probably help? If you're gathering wood, or cutting it, I can do either of those..."  
  
"Well, we'll be doing both of those." Rose heads around to the side of the house, where a small lean-to shelters only a few extra chunks of wood and a well-worn hatchet. "Most of the time we can get all the wood we need from fallen logs and smaller trees, so we don't have to do any extreme lumberjacking," she says, reaching for the hatchet. "But even without cutting any trees down, it's quite the job hauling it all back to the house and splitting it up."  
  
Watching her sharpen the blade, John asks, "Have you ever considered using magic?"  
  
Rose looks up at him without moving her head. "No, John, that never occurred to me."  
  
"Well, some witch you are, then," he says, crossing his arms, but a smile tugs at the corners of his lips. So he's learned to detect sarcasm after all.  
  
"It's just that I was never quite sure how to go about it," Rose says. She runs one finger along the edge of the axe and straightens up. "With my current skills, shattering a piece of wood into splinters would be an easy task, but getting one clean cut is another story. And maneuvering an entire log through the woods isn't quite the same as propelling a yarn ball across the floor."  
  
John glances at the line of trees behind them. "Well, I can do that much, at least. I could even knock a tree down if you want me to! Windstorms do that all the time, and I can even lower it gently to the ground instead of wrecking everything around it."  
  
"I might have to take you up on that," Rose says, following his gaze. "There are only so many trees that fall naturally, and they're not always close by or in good condition. If you could bring just one small evergreen down close to here, that should be all we'd need all winter."  
  
Locating a good prospect turns out to be surprisingly easy. After years of cutting up moss-covered logs and gathering large branches to split down into kindling, Rose finds that having John there to help makes everything go twice as fast. From the air it's easy to pick out a smaller tree in an open space, and then all Rose has to do is score some notches in the trunk with magic and her axe before John can push it over. He maneuvers it down gently between the bigger trees, and Rose has the brush cleared away and most of the branches hacked off in the time it would have taken her just to find a prize this nice by herself.  
  
"The trunk is still far too large to move, though," Rose points out, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand.  
  
"Is that a problem?" John floats over from where he's been picking at some strips of loose bark. "Can't you just cut it up here and take what you need back?"  
  
Rose sits down on the log. "Usually I would, but this is also more than I usually have to work with. I imagine it would be easier to chop up if it was in smaller chunks. We don't need all of it at once, anyway."  
  
A sudden breeze blows her bangs away from her sticky skin. This time of year the wind should be chilling in the shade, but after moving around all morning, it's more refreshing than anything else. Rose leans into it for a moment before opening her eyes and realizing the bushes and low-hanging branches farther into the woods aren't moving at all.  
  
She looks at John where he hovers farther down the trunk, feet dangling just over the bark and one hand rubbing his chin thoughtfully. He darts a glance at her, then quickly looks away, and she smiles.  
  
Before she can accuse him of anything, though, he says, "Well, it shouldn't be too hard to split it into manageable parts, right? You can use your magic to weaken the wood, and then the axe to cut through it, and then I'll lift up whatever you need and carry it home. Will that work?"  
  
He looks up, half questioning and half hopeful, and Rose gets back to her feet. "Let's find out," she says, hoping her face doesn't betray quite how pleased she is.  
  
Soon enough the work is mostly done, the log roughly hacked into smaller sections that look much less daunting. John pats one of them.  
  
"So, I'll just take this to the yard for us to split up, and we can leave the rest for later." The wind swirls around him as he experimentally lifts up the edge of the log. "Don't want to destroy the whole forest in one go, right?"  
  
He's obviously joking, but Rose's lips twist into a frown of their own accord. John stops, gently setting the wood back down. It rolls slightly when he lets it go.  
  
"Um... something wrong?"  
  
Rose looks up at him. His eyes are troubled, like he's afraid he said something wrong but doesn't know what it was, and she shakes her head.  
  
"No, I'm fine. Let's get home. You can fly with that; I'll walk and meet you there."  
  
John hesitates, opening his mouth as if to say something more, but in the end he merely nods and heaves a piece of the trunk into the air. Rose watches it disappear over the treetops and waits for the wind to die down before striking out for the house, trying to shake the uneasy feeling that had gripped her so suddenly. Really, the remark meant nothing, but something about it lodges in the back of her chest and won't let go.  
  
She's not that surprised, when she steps out of the forest, to find John riding the piece of log like a horse around the yard. He waves, and Rose feels the stormy mood that was settling over her start to clear up a little.   
  
Fitting that he's always such a breath of fresh air when she needs it, she thinks as she goes to join him. Maybe there's even time for a quick ride herself before they get back to work...  
  
When they've finally cut the wood up and put everything away, John smiles at their new stack of firewood with pride. "Phew!" he says, even though there doesn't seem to be a drop of sweat on him. "How about that? We could totally make it anywhere, Rose! With your brawn, and my brains, there's not a job in the world we couldn't do."  
  
Rose rolls her eyes and starts for the house. "I'm not sure that renowned brain of yours is working quite right, John. I seem to recall you doing most of the heavy lifting."  
  
He easily overtakes her, slipping by in a rush of wind to float backwards to the door. "Well, you were the one with the axe," he says as he holds the door open for her. "But if you insist, I suppose I can be the brains  _and_  the brawn."  
  
This time she snorts, but smiles as she walks through the door, because he's right: they really do make a good team.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rated T for This Was Originally A Kinkmeme Prompt After All

There's a kind of tension in the house, John comes to realize a few days later. Maybe it's been there for a while and he just hadn't picked up on it until now, but he's beginning to feel the subtle changes in air pressure that signify an oncoming storm.  
  
Of course, he's known for a long time that Rose has been getting weirder. There's something more fervent than usual about the way she scans her books and practices her spells. He doesn't say anything because he assumes she knows what she's doing, but he's starting to think she may need to take a break, a more serious break than the evenings they spend curled up together not doing anything magic-related (but still pretty magical, he thinks, heh). He wishes there was something he could do to help her relax, or even help her with her project so she won't be so stressed, but the way she hides herself away to do her most serious work, he doesn't know that any offer he could make would be appreciated.  
  
She shows him just how wrong he is one day when her mother has to go into town on business. John catches only snippets of the conversation from the next room; Roxy is going to be gone all day, can Rose make her own dinner if she happens to be late coming home, yes mother she is an adult who can take care of herself, believe it or not.   
  
None of it means that much to him until Rose has watched her mother disappear into the woods and then paced aimlessly around the living room a bit, casting furtive glances at him as if she wants to say something but doesn't know how to start.  
  
John looks out the window. It's kind of dark and gray; not raining yet, but could easily start to soon. He hopes it stays clear for Rose's mom. She took a thick coat, but still, it must suck walking all that way when it's wet and cold out.  
  
Suddenly Rose clears her throat. "Can you come up to my room with me?" she says, and is heading to the staircase before he can reply.  
  
Upstairs, John shuts the door behind him and lingers, hand still on the doorknob, because Rose has hardly taken two paces into the room and appears to be thinking hard about something. Not that thinking hard is out of the ordinary for Rose, but she's sure acting odd today.  
  
"So, uh. What did you want to...?"  
  
It takes a moment for Rose to glance up, and when she does she looks almost... nervous? "You heard her, didn't you, John? She won't be back until late tonight."  
  
"Yeah? She's usually not around all day anyway."  
  
"But she's still here. There's always that possibility that she could leave her work, check in on us at any moment. This is an assurance. We are alone."  
  
Rose takes a step toward him and reaches out a hand to run her fingers down the side of his face, muttering, "I never really appreciated having the house to myself as a child. The solitude was fine, and I suppose I really did value the privacy, but I always thought of it foremost as symbolic of her neglect. Or a taunt - leave the alcohol in plain sight, tell her she's alone for a few hours, see if she's really the well-behaved child you think she is."  
  
"Um," John says.  
  
The slight tremor in Rose's voice when she chuckles is definitely nerves. "I'm sorry, this isn't really relevant to you. In fact it's not relevant at all anymore. I'd like to think I'm beyond trying to 'accidentally' burn the house down out of spite. I guess I'm just saying..." Her voice drops as she leans forward until her lips are almost touching his. "I never cared about being left entirely alone until I had a reason to want to be left alone. Relatively alone." She pauses. "Alone with you."  
  
A quiet laugh escapes John's throat. "You ramble when you're nervous."  
  
Air brushes his lips as Rose huffs. He cuts off her inevitable snarky reply by leaning in and kissing her gently, but she's having none of that; in no time he finds himself pushed back against the closed door, all thoughts of being gentlemanly quickly evaporating.  
  
Her arms on either side of his chest would pin him if solid fetters meant anything - a doubly-useless restraint, as he makes no attempt to escape when she removes her left hand to slip it under his shirt. Her fingers trace the lines of muscles and ribs, touches soft and warm with the occasional light scrape of long fingernails, and then a harsher scratch as he accidentally bites her tongue.  
  
"Sorry," he whispers, but she doesn't give him time to say more than that before diving straight into another kiss. Her right hand joins the other in lifting up his shirt to his chest.  
  
By the time Rose breaks the kiss she's breathing hard, face flushed, and John is hyperaware of how his body is responding in kind. He can feel his blood pounding and her own heartbeat in her fingertips as he helps her pull his shirt and hood over his head; she reaches up to fix his glasses, skewed in the process, and blushes harder when their eyes meet. Something is different than their previous makeouts - like she's more intent, more embarrassed, almost shaking but driving toward some goal instead of casual enjoyment. The shirt drops forgotten at his feet, his soles pressed against the ground for once; he doesn't want to get too far away from her.  
  
"Uh, Rose?" John says quietly while she moves back in to kiss his neck, softly press her teeth to his skin. "Maybe it's kind of late for this, but... you know this isn't the relationship witches and familiars usually have... right?"  
  
Her hands send tingles over his body and her breath is warm when she speaks, lips so close he can almost feel them. "I don't care."  
  
John tilts his head back and closes his eyes, letting her continue down to his shoulder, back to his neck, to the other side, a somewhat messy mix of her lips and teeth and sometimes her tongue.   
  
"I'm not really human either," he points out, though the way he wraps his arms around her to pull her body up against his voids any weight the statement might have had as a protest.  
  
Rose finds her way back to his jaw and then to his lips, but stops with her nose pressed against his, her breaths tickling his mouth while he forgets to breathe at all.  
  
"I don't care, John."  
  
He's having a hard time caring, either, when she kisses him again, and without even thinking about it he finds his hands on the hem of her own shirt, and then underneath it. Her skin is smooth and hot under his fingertips and he's almost surprised at how addictive this is, at how it logically shouldn't mean anything to trace lines on her bare back but right now it means everything.  
  
Suddenly Rose hesitates, pulls back a little. "As long as... you're human enough that...?"  
  
Her hands have slipped down to graze the skin just above the waistband of John's pants and he swallows audibly. He could end this now. All he has to do is say no and they won't run the risk of ruining a relationship they're supposed to have for another 80 years by trying to make it something it's not - they can be friends, really good friends, maybe good friends who occasionally make out, god she's pretty, and kind of adorable all flustered like this, but mostly he just didn't know she could be this - this hot, or this passionate about other people, about  _him_ , and-  
  
"Yes."  
  
It's not something he had ever really thought about before, but it's true, he knows just by virtue of being what he is. Is it something he needs, no, not the way she seems to need it, but is it something he would be glad to give her, something he  _wants_... well. Never in his existence can he remember feeling anything like the thrill he gets from the way she's looking at him, and the sparks that follow her hand down his side remind him of conjuring lightning, not as much raw power, but much more electrifying.  
  
(Is it storming outside? He thinks he hears rain, but he hasn't really been paying attention for a while.)  
  
Still Rose wavers, fingers drawing away from his waist, and something about her gaze is uncharacteristically uncertain as she says, "If... you don't want to, then just-"  
  
She almost yelps as he pulls her closer, her shirtfront flush against his chest, and extracts one hand from her clothes to tilt her chin up a little clumsily and kiss her again. Almost instantly the tension evaporates, and she all but collapses against him. When he pushes away from the wall, she immediately regains control and steers him, in turn, toward the bed.  
  
He definitely hears thunder now, and he doesn't think it's going to stop anytime soon.

 

* * *

 

When Roxy Lalonde returns home in the early evening, the house is quiet.  
  
Not so odd; her daughter is a fairly quiet girl, after all, the kind to tuck herself away in a corner to read or study, or knit in her room before bed. Even her witchcraft isn't very loud, most of the time.  
  
So Roxy isn't surprised to find the living room dark and silent when she opens the front door. The only question is, where is Rose? In the observatory? The study? Probably not outside; it was raining pretty hard earlier, a storm that came on rather suddenly, Ms. Lalonde felt. At least the weather was nicer in town, and seems to have lightened up now.  
  
There's little evidence of any activity downstairs. The kitchen has hardly been touched; maybe Rose made a snack earlier, but probably not dinner, given how clean the counter is. She isn't a messy person, per se, but she does have a habit of leaving things lying around when she considers herself too busy to put them away.  
  
Upstairs, the door to Rose's room is cracked open. Roxy peers in and then pushes it a few inches farther. "Rosie? I'm home."  
  
Her daughter is lying on her bed, a book propped against one raised knee. She looks up.  
  
"Hello. You're earlier than I expected."  
  
"Things went quicker than I had hoped," Roxy says, eyes sweeping across the room. "Where's your friend?"  
  
"Around."  
  
"Oh. Anyway, just came to see if you've eaten yet."  
  
"I have not, actually. In fact I was just thinking about getting up to prepare something, but I got caught up in the middle of a chapter..." She skims the pages of her book as if looking for a place to stop.  
  
"Aw, don't worry about it. I'll make somethin' for both of us. It might be a while, so you don't need to get up yet, I'll call you when it's ready, 'kay?”  
  
"All right. Thank you, Mother."  
  
Roxy smiles as she softly shuts the door again. Once she's gone Rose looks around the room. And looks. And looks some more.  
  
Just as she's starting to get annoyed, John appears a foot above the bed, dressed only from the waist down.  
  
"I was just making sure she was really gone!" he says. "She seems suspicious."  
  
"She's been suspicious since the day she met you. Let her think what she wants."  
  
John hangs in the air a little longer. "So can I...?" The loose gestures he makes with his hands mean nothing to Rose except that he doesn't know what to do with them.  
  
She raises an eyebrow. "Can you what?"  
  
"Oh, come on." John moves a little closer to the bed. "Don't act all aloof now. You were perfectly happy to cuddle up before you started getting worried your mom might be home soon."  
  
"I  _suppose_ ," Rose says, putting her book aside. That's all the invitation John needs to swoop down and dig his way back under the covers, settling against her side.  
  
When he finally stops fidgeting, she adds, "But I really was thinking about going to make dinner soon, you know. Your cuddle time was always short-lived."  
  
"No you weren't," John mutters against her shoulder, "you were 'too busy reading.' Anyway, this is better than eating. If it takes her three years to make dinner I won't complain."  
  
"No, I was actually reading. And if it takes more than an hour I will complain. I'm hungry."  
  
John huffs. "Wow, okay, I see how it is! You'd rather have your precious food than me. Humans, I swear."  
  
"See, the thing is, we humans need our precious food to survive." Rose reaches up to run her fingers through his hair. "And as much as I enjoy your company, you are not a form of sustenance."  
  
John waggles his eyebrows and opens his mouth, but Rose stops him with a look, so he just snuggles closer instead.  
  
The room is silent when they stop talking. Through the crack in the curtains Rose can see a bit of the forest outside, the dusk not quite complete enough to hide how the trees are still dripping intermittently.  
  
"...It started raining not long after I brought you up here," she remembers.  
  
"You noticed that?"  
  
"Was it a coincidence?"  
  
"I doubt it."  
  
"In that case," she says, shifting a little, "you're going to need to learn to get that under control. It's a little inconvenient."  
  
Something like indignation flashes across John's face, but it settles into an almost-guilty kind of agreement a moment later. It is possible, after all - with some work he managed to control his powers enough to stop summoning hurricanes when he gets upset (though making him upset less often helped with that, too).   
  
"Well..." he says. "If you insist, I can try. But I think I'm going to need to practice."  
  
Rose smiles as she leans down to him. "I think that can be arranged."


	28. Chapter 28

Perhaps the impromptu storm wasn't as arbitrary as Rose initially thought, because it rains on and off for the next few days even without John's interference. With the weather turning colder, she decides it's not such a good idea to hang around outside so much, and spends most of her time in the study or observatory working.  
  
Finally, one morning dawns brighter and then deigns to stay that way for the next several hours. When the cloud cover still hasn't returned by noon, Rose cautiously ventures out onto the porch, John idly following her.  
  
"What's your assessment of the weather for this week?" she asks, walking up to the rail and looking over the yard. The wet grass shines in the sunlight, shimmering as thin, wispy clouds cast shadows over the ground. One horizon looks a little dark, but the other is clear, and the sky above them is a nice pale blue.  
  
She can feel John float up beside her. "You mean like, later on? Umm..." He goes quiet like he's considering, not an intent kind of focus but more of a spacey thoughtfulness. Weather is intuitive to him, after all - how fast and what direction the wind is blowing, the air pressure, even the temperature and humidity to an extent. He described it almost like meditation, to let his consciousness drift out on the breeze until it reaches beyond the wind currents he generates around him and flows into the air he's not touching. Maybe his forecasts aren't perfect, but with his kind of instinctive knowledge, there's no one better to guess what nature has in store.  
  
"Pretty clear," he says suddenly, eyes snapping back into focus. "Maybe a little cloudy, not a whole lot of rain, probably."  
  
"Excellent," Rose says, immediately turning back to the house. "We're going on a little trip today."  
  
John floats behind her through the door. "Where to?" he asks as she begins to get her things together.  
  
"The forest. It won't take long."  
  
As she throws some supplies into a bag, John stares out the window. Eventually he says, "Can't you just scry to see the future weather, or something? I thought that's what being a seer was all about."  
  
Can't she, indeed, she thinks as she holds up an empty glass jar. But images in a crystal ball are not a guarantee - or so she chooses to believe.  
  
She answers simply, "I trust your judgment more."  
  
They go right away, while they can be sure the weather will remain nice, and Rose directs John to a certain spot in the woods. It only takes a little walking after they set down to find what she's looking for: a spring bubbling out of the ground.  
  
"Oh hey, I remember this place," John says. Other than the spring, there's nothing really remarkable about it, but they've probably passed it plenty of times in their forest ventures.  
  
Rose kneels down by the spring. From her bag she extracts the jar and a smaller wooden cup, and John watches silently as she starts scooping cupfuls of the spring water into the jar, until it's almost full. Once the lid has been carefully resealed, she wipes the jar and cup clean and puts them both back into her pack.  
  
"We came all this way for water?" John asks as she stands up.  
  
"Spring water," Rose corrects. "Water that comes from underground like this can have different magical properties than free-running, open-air water."  
  
"More earth than wind, huh," John muses.   
  
"Exactly."  
  
That's all she needs, and John, as always, has little desire to remain under the trees if he doesn't have to, so they take off without further delay. He fidgets a little on the way home; riding on his back, Rose can almost feel the curiosity buzzing through his body. She runs a hand lightly along his shoulder and for a few moments considers answering the questions she knows are on the tip of his tongue. They are partners in more than magic now, after all, but especially in magic. He knows her better than anyone else, both as a person and as a witch. If ever there was a person to disclose her thoughts to...  
  
But when he turns his head to speak to her, all he says is, "You don't want to look for any herbs or other things while we're up here?"  
  
"No," Rose says. "I think we've pretty well covered this area. I have all I need for the moment, anyway."  
  
"Okay."  
  
He turns back around, and Rose pushes away her misgivings. If he's not going to outright ask, she probably shouldn't say anything more about it. Just because they're so close doesn't mean all of her business is his business, right? It's not something he really needs to be involved in. So she bites her tongue and allows him to change the subject for the rest of the flight.  
  
When they get home, the first thing Rose does is carefully place the water with the rest of her supplies in the observatory. Aware of John watching her from the doorway, she sorts through the pile, voicing her mental checklist in only the barest murmur.  
  
This should be it. This is everything she needs. Just a little more reading to make sure everything's right, and a bit of mental preparation, and then she can start.  
  
She's finally ready.


	29. Chapter 29

The moment John floats outside two evenings later, he knows this is what they've been waiting for.  
  
In the orange glow of the sunset, Rose has drawn a circle in the yard with ground up chalk. The powder sits atop the blades of grass somewhat unevenly but precisely placed, as if she had already sketched the shape underneath. Now she's laying out some symbol inside the circle, a jumble of lines and curves that mean nothing to John.  
  
She looks up at him when she finishes, and wordlessly dodges around the lines to a pile of supplies near the door. John recognizes a lot of them from the observatory - the jar of water, candles, some of the herbs they'd been collecting over the past few weeks. She sets the remaining chalk back down next to them.  
  
"What are you doing?" John asks as she picks up a set of thin, wooden cups.  
  
Rose doesn't answer until she's poured precisely half a cup of spring water into each container. "Preparing a spell."  
  
John looks at the circle again. "All this for just one spell? It must be pretty powerful."  
  
"It is," is all Rose says, carrying each cup to a different point on the chalk diagram and settling it in the grass.  
  
She's obviously pretty preoccupied with her preparations, and John knows better than to interrupt her - he wouldn't want to cause her to forget something important, or distract her into making a mistake - so he watches quietly as she goes about her work, occasionally consulting a thick book that lays open next to her quickly-shrinking pile of tools. Some of the herbs are laid within the circle. Others are torn up and sprinkled across the grass, or into the cups in small doses. He realizes that some of the odd-looking sticks must be incense, which she lights with a snap of her fingers. The tiny fires spark into existence and then out again, leaving thin trails of smoke that continue burning from the tips of the wood.  
  
Nothing seems that out of place until she lays out the candles, positioning them perfectly around the ring in their metal holders and carefully balancing each one until it stands up steadily.  
  
"Candles?" John says, watching her dig the sixth and last one into the dirt a little to keep it upright. "Okay, ambiance is one thing, and incense is another, but I thought you hated the idea of lighting fires near grass."  
  
Rose looks at the last candle for a long moment before standing up. "If I had any other option I would take it, but unfortunately this is necessary. It seems a little bit of every element must be present and open in some form for this to work, and I'd rather candles than torches or anything bigger."  
  
Every element? What kind of ritual even is this? Something about it doesn't sit right with John, but... she is right that candles aren't that dangerous, really. Even if one fell over, it's such a small flame that barely anything would catch right away. As long as they keep a careful watch they could easily stop that from becoming a problem. And since Rose will probably be busy with... whatever the spell is supposed to do, that can be John's job. Her personal candle supervisor.  
  
He looks over the ring again and begins to understand. Spring water, mountain herbs - everything Rose has put in the circle has some elemental property to it, and he guesses everything left in the pile does, too. After slightly adjusting the placements of some of the sticks of incense, Rose comes back to take the old spade in one hand and her new dagger in the other.  
  
"So..." John starts. "Are those element thingies too? The spade symbolizes earth, doesn't it?"  
  
"Shovels, tools created for the purpose of moving soil and earth," Rose says, digging the blade into the ground at a precise point measured out between lines. "The cups have the power to contain water. And blades represent the power of fire to temper and reshape other objects, as well as the sheer strength of weaponry and of heat." So saying, she unsheathes the dagger and buries it up to the hilt at a point equidistant from the spade.  
  
"What about wind?"  
  
In response, Rose removes her wands from the sash around her waist.  
  
"Wind is tricky," she says, and John crosses his arms over his chest, already skeptical. "It's invisible and difficult to move or contain. Like fire, it often requires an object representative of its power. In this case, scholars have decided wands work fine."  
  
"Huh." If she says so. In any case, he's here too; he can supply all the wind any spell needs, right?  
  
Perhaps Rose is done setting up, because the pile of supplies is almost entirely depleted, and she's standing with her book in one hand and the wand in the other pointing at a line on the open page. She doesn't look at it for long, though, before she raises her face to stare vacantly at the back of the house.  
  
Eventually she says, "You should probably stay away for the evening."  
  
"...Why?" Still hovering a few yards distant, John makes no attempt to move.  
  
But instead of answering, Rose seems to reconsider. "Well... maybe you  _should_  be here for this. But please don't interfere. I've planned this out very carefully."  
  
"Interfere?" John drops a little closer to the ground, frustration creeping into his voice. "What would I have to interfere in? Can you just tell me what you're going to do? I know you like the whole Coy Mysterious Witch image or whatever, but this is starting to worry me."  
  
Rose sighs softly and looks at her book. Her shadow is long in the last rays of sunset, stretching all the way across the yard, and the encroaching darkness is making it increasingly difficult to see her face.  
  
"It's another summoning spell," she finally admits, immediately catching his attention. "Somewhat similar to the one I used to accidentally summon you, but more powerful. That first one was meant to reach into the lesser regions of the Void, but this one should allow me to commune with the Dark Gods themselves."  
  
"Dark Gods?!" John nearly shouts. "Are you out of your mind?! Those guys are way further out of your reach than you think, and I mean that in every possible way! I don't know if they can even  _talk_  to you; they speak some weird, otherworldly language, don't they?"  
  
"They do," Rose answers, to John's surprise. Where has she been learning this? That book? "But I'm fairly certain they can find a way to communicate with at least one of us." She fixes him with a look. "Creatures of the Furthest Ring are incredibly powerful, John. If there is any being accessible to us that would have knowledge of the future or how to change it, I suspect it's the Horrorterrors."  
  
The very word sends a shiver down John's spine, but he tries to suppress his bristling. Rose does seem knowledgeable on the subject, if in different ways than he, and she's obviously thought this through. Of course...  
  
"But don't you remember the last time you tried to summon something from the Void?"  
  
"Certainly. And just because it didn't go as planned doesn't mean the outcome was ultimately undesirable."  
  
John snorts. "I appreciate the sentiment, but if you accidentally call up some bloodthirsty tentacle monster from the depths of the Furthest Ring it's more likely to gargle at you and murder you than date you, you know."  
  
Undeterred, Rose sets her book down on the grass and snaps the candles to life one by one. "I know that, John, but this isn't quite the same thing. When I summoned you I was asking for a pact. This time all I'm asking for is a chance to glean some knowledge. It's non-binding. If they don't like the arrangement, they can leave." She kneels down to straighten one of the holders that was starting to lean. "And I'm better prepared this time. Both my skills and understanding of magic have vastly improved in the last few months."  
  
For a few moments John only watches her. "...So you intend to open a connection to some dark god and ask it about the fire?"  
  
"Presumably, it will know what causes the fire and how to stop it. If not, perhaps I will be able to borrow some of its power to continue my own investigation and, ideally, prevent it myself."  
  
Another shiver threatens to run up John's spine - whether it's from the evening chill just starting to set in or the thought of Rose letting those... those _things_  from the Void creep their tentacles into her powers, he can't be sure.  
  
A part of him wants to tell her to stop, demand it or plead for it, but... who is he to argue? She's the witch here; he's just a familiar. She's been studying magic for who knows how long, and she  _is_  good at it, and this is obviously important to her. He doesn't want her to think he doesn't believe in her.  
  
So he stays silent, watching the shadows under the trees darkening and trying to convince himself that it'll be fine. It is Rose, after all. She (almost) always knows what she's doing.  
  
The uneasiness he feels must just be his natural aversion to things from the Lower World. Yeah, that's probably it. Since he's from the Upper World, he just doesn't want much to do with the Void and its inhabitants.  
  
He looks around the circle at the representations of the elements. Earth, water, wind, fire. It's not that John has anything  _against_  the other elements. It's just, well... fire is the only one he feels like he understands very well. Fire belongs to the Upper World, just like wind and light. And he  _guesses_ water isn't all that bad, really. It's the highest denizen of the Lower World, and wind is the lowest of the Upper World, so they occasionally brush edges, like ocean waves licking against the sea breeze. Foreign, but peaceful.  
  
But farther down? Earth is diametrically opposed to wind, just as water is to fire. And as if that's not bad enough, darkness sits even lower on the scale, the depths of the Lower World, the lowest of the low. No, darkness is too far away from John's realm for him to have or want much experience with it. So really, he has no reason to assume that anything in particular will happen. No reason to assume he'll be at all helpful if something goes wrong... but no reason to assume anything will go wrong, either. Maybe the Horrorterrors aren't so bad; maybe it's just his Upper World bias getting the better of him.  
  
So. Nothing to worry about. Right?  
  
None of it stops John from lifting into the air uneasily as Rose begins to chant.  
  
Gradually he becomes aware that the lines she drew on the ground are starting to shine, unnaturally bright white light that has nothing to do with the orange rays of the sunset. But despite the glow, the insides of the glyph seem to be flooded with darkness, as if the light is casting a whole pool of shapeless shadows between the lines.  
  
Is this supposed to happen? Rose has her eyes closed, so John can't tell if this is what she expected or not. She's rooted to the spot, steady, even though the darkness at her feet almost seems to sway, rippling like the surface of a lake.  
  
Something is winding around her ankle, some dark tendril... or is it? Maybe it's just the light playing tricks on his eyes. The western horizon is edged with bright red and the candles keep flickering, but even that doesn't quite explain why he's having so much trouble focusing his eyes on the area around Rose.  
  
And then he sees it, clearly - or does he? - something like tentacles creeping out of the ground as if emerging from a hole, waving slowly as they climb higher. The very sight of it causes the hair on the back of John's neck to stand up. The enveloping darkness that he can barely see through, the deliberate, sluggish motion of the tentacles writhing around each other in one big mass... everything about this repulses him, and it's all he can do to stay fixed to his place in the air.  
  
If Rose feels at all the same way, she's not showing it. Her eyes are still closed - does she even know it's there? - and her mouth still murmuring the words that allow it to drag itself up from the deep, through the ground as if it's not even solid. John can see faint beads of sweat on her skin, but she doesn't stop.  
  
At least, not until a rumbling, gargling sound overpowers her voice. Her eyes snap open and she draws in a breath.  
  
So she really did it? She summoned a creature from the void to the human realm? Part of John wants to be impressed, proud, triumphant, but a larger part of him is crawling with dread and the sort of repugnance that prevents him from averting his eyes.  
  
Rose's chanting dies away and the creature rumbles again, deeply and loudly enough to reverberate through John's bones, though he's left with the simultaneous impression that it made no sound at all. It seems to be partially submerged in the ground still, but it's no longer moving, just towering in front of Rose with that one tendril still settled around her foot.  
  
Slowly Rose reaches out a hand, an offering of some sort. "Are you of the Furthest Ring?" she asks, calmly and clearly. "May I ask you something? I need to know about the future."  
  
In response it makes another rasping gargle, and John wonders if it can actually understand her. If it can, though, it must not be feeling very cooperative, because it doesn't move, doesn't react further, just slithers its tentacles against one another and waits.   
  
Rose tries again, asking a halting question in some language John doesn't quite understand, but the Horrorterror answers with the same growl - or maybe a slightly different growl, for all John knows; it all sounds the same to him. He shrugs when Rose shoots him a quick glance.  
  
While she seems to be considering what to try next, the creature finally starts speaking on its own, a deep-throated rumble that starts from nothing but grows almost unbearable. The sound is awfully reminiscent of the way its dark tentacles wind around its body and tangle together, guttural yet slippery, making John want to cover his ears (for all the good it would do).  
  
"I..." Rose says. "I who completed your summoning ritual ask nothing more of you than simple information, if you are able and willing to supply it. Will you aid me?"  
  
This time, the gurgling almost seems to contain words.  _Power_ ,  _summon_ , and...  
  
"Fear...?" Rose repeats, narrowing her eyes. But if the jumble of sounds means anything to her she doesn't act on it, only tries to step forward the slightest bit and finds the tentacle pushed up against her ankle. She stumbles a little, raising her foot away from its grip, and steps back instead.  
  
John doesn't know if it was her movement that triggered it or something else, but he feels it right before it happens. A surge of power that makes the air thick and sends a jolt up his spine, and he's already reaching out, screaming for Rose to get back, but he's not fast enough. It's like the air itself is repelling him, filled with some dense, damp substance, the colder and wetter version of smoke.   
  
Visible, too, as it thickens around Rose, materializing almost into tendrils that push John away as he frantically tries to fight through them. He can't even see Rose anymore, everything is too dark, and every time the tentacles touch him they leave his skin clammy and tainted with this bone-deep conviction that he's dirty and needs purification. It's almost worse than pain, like mental suffocation, like he's choking on nothing and his body is screaming for him to find clear air but  _Rose_ , he has to get Rose, he can't leave until...  
  
A soundless explosion from the center of the mass drives the heavy air out, rushing past John's skin and dissipating somewhere beyond, and when he opens his eyes he can see her. Standing there just like before, a few snaky tendrils still rippling around her body. With half the weight off his chest John lunges forward, only to come to an abrupt stop in midair when she turns around.  
  
This isn't Rose. No, no no no, they did something to her. Her skin has become stormcloud gray, her hair pure white, and he knows it's not a trick of the light this time. The darkness drips from her body like oil and flares up around her. Where there once was something like light in her eyes, there's now only a dull sheen, half lifelessness and half rage and all wrong.  
  
John gulps, suddenly afraid to move forward. This... she isn't human anymore, he doesn't think, but he doesn't know  _what_  she is. Possessed? Dangerous? Will it hurt him to touch her? Will she hurt him if he tries?  
  
"...Rose?" he ventures, cautiously, as if his voice might set off an explosion.  
  
The words that come from her mouth aren't her own - they scratch and gargle like they don't fit properly in her throat, and he can hear only the barest hint of her real voice in the tone.  _Broodfester_ , something tells him; he's not sure if it's his innate spirit knowledge or if he's heard Rose say the word before. But whatever the case, he can't understand a word of it, so he stares helplessly and doesn't reply.  
  
While he's still trying to decide what to do, Rose points her wand at one of the candles surrounding her. She raises her arm and the candle follows, holder and all, barely wavering as it rises three, four, five feet into the air. For a moment all John can do is watch - when did Rose learn such controlled manipulation of other objects? Sure, she could levitate things, but never so long or so steadily.  
  
He stares as she uses her other wand to free the flame from the candle, letting the metal and wax drop back to the ground with a dull clatter. The fire wobbles, flickers, but remains concentrated in the air as she moves it in a steady loop, up, down, left, right, toward her, away...  
  
And then a noise sounds somewhere in the distance and just like that, her concentration is broken. Her hand jerks, the flame shoots forward into the grass, and everything clicks so fast in John's head that he's left reeling - dizzy, too stunned to stop her when she sweeps her wand in an arc and the flame follows, searing a path into the ground and quickly spreading across the grass.  
  
"Rose!" he yells almost before he knows what he's doing. One gray hand aims at a patch of fire and it flickers out, but the rest is still burning, and growing by the second. Isn't she going to...?  
  
The moment he reaches her side, she leaps away, narrowing her eyes and growling, and then both those wands are pointed at  _him_  and oh god he's seen what she can do and he doesn't think he wants to fight her, not like this. He sidesteps whatever she shoots at him and takes to the air.  
  
Apparently that's enough to declassify him as a threat in however much of a mind she has left, because she ceases paying attention to him in favor of moving away from the fire and shooting at the trees instead. At first he can't figure out what she's trying to accomplish, but one particularly powerful blast blows the bark squarely off a thick trunk and he remembers her  _wishing_  she could do that during target practice.  
  
So what is...? Another shot knocks a loose branch off its tree and he knows something is horribly, horribly wrong. Rose would be stopping that fire, Rose would never have been so incautious as to play with loose fire to begin with. And now she's standing there, firelight illuminating her gray skin in bursts, shadows weaving around her body so tightly he can barely see her clothes.   
  
Something cold and constricting settles in his chest. What did the Horrorterrors  _do_...?


	30. Chapter 30

As much as John wants to fly down and shake Rose out of whatever trance she's in, he doesn't really want to get caught up in those blasts, and anyway there's probably something else he should be worrying about first. The fire has spread across the grass, inching toward both the house and the forest. It's already licking some stray bushes and ferns beneath the outermost trees; if it gets ahold of anything more substantial, they can say goodbye to the woods.  
  
John moves down to crouch on the edge of the roof, mind spinning. Only one thought clears itself from the mess crowding his head:  _Is this what Rose kept seeing in her dreams?_  Orange flames and a black sky, the stars obscured by smoke, creeping dread and simmering fear...  
  
He shakes his head vigorously and jumps forward. This isn't the time for thinking, this is the time for  _doing_! Collecting himself, he pushes out with the wind, trying to blow the flames away from the house. The yellow tips flicker and dance, but as soon as the wind dies down, the fire only roars louder and expands.  
  
Wait, shit, all he's doing is fanning the flames! And he was just thinking that fire is the element he feels closest to - he should know how it works!   
  
Taking a breath, he tries again, this time sucking the air toward him. It swirls around his body as it evacuates the space in front of him, rippling and trying desperately to fill the void. He can feel sweat on his neck, less from the heat than the exertion. Air does not like a vacuum... but then, neither does fire. It's starting to simmer down in the area he's cleared, weak without the oxygen it needs, leaving only a patch of burnt ground in its wake.  
  
Yes, yes...! If he can just do this around enough of the house, maybe he can create a wall, a moat of dirt the fire won't be able to bridge without anything to latch ont-  
  
Something all but explodes across the yard, and John snaps his head up to see an old, decaying trunk go up in flames. Damn it all, there's no way he can protect both the house and the forest, not to mention Rose-  
  
Rose! Where is Rose? The fire has spread to where she had been standing, and John's heart jolts as he imagines it catching up to her - but no, even in this state she wouldn't let that happen, would she? She has to be nearby...  
  
Letting the wind rush back into its place, John leaps up again, feeling the air pressure restabilize below him. He scans the ground, squinting against the smoke drifting over from the fire below and then blowing it away with one hand. Surely she would be hard to see in unsteady firelight, wrapped in shadow as she is, sporting dark clothes and dark gray skin... but no matter how hard he looks he can't find her anywhere.   
  
Just as he's starting to consider the unsettling possibility that she's headed somewhere else to wreak destruction, like inside her own home or toward the village, he sees movement from the corner of his eye and looks up to see - Rose? _Levitating?_  
  
She's not very high, and she wavers in place like the candle did, but sure enough she's suspended herself in midair. There's none of the precision and ease of movement John has when he flies - more like a toddler just learning to walk, who can't stay steady on her feet - but she's not falling, either. John moves a little closer, swearing under his breath; just one more advantage he doesn't have over her anymore. If she can  _fly_  who knows where she'll disappear to when he takes his eyes off her?  
  
A banging sound and the shrill shattering of glass catch his attention, and despite himself he turns to see Rose's mother standing in the doorway. Her wine glass lays in pieces at her feet, her white coat spattered with red-purple drops, and her mouth hangs open in the light of the fire before her.   
  
New objective: get her the hell out of here.  
  
"Roxy!" John shouts, swooping down in front of her. "You have to leave! Now!"  
  
She looks up at him blankly. "Wha...?"  
  
"There's no time to explain!" In one motion he uses the wind to scoop her into his arms, but before he can get very far away, she's tugging on his arm.  
  
"Wait, wait! We can't just...!"  
  
"We have to!" John says, even as he stops.  
  
"At least let me get my gun! 'T's not safe out here in the dark!"  
  
The dark should be the least of her worries, John thinks, but turns back to set her by the door. Roxy darts inside and comes back with a scarf wrapped around one hand and her rifle in the other. Thanking the stars that she's sensible enough not to try to raid the whole house, or to argue with him suddenly picking her up again (a pang strikes his chest when he remembers Rose's irritation that first time, and how that sensible human anger would be so much more preferable to the way she's acting now), he takes off toward the river, pushing the smoke away as he flies.   
  
Roxy seems to be getting her bearings - of course, Rose must have gotten that level-headedness from somewhere - but she still looks stunned as she peers over John's shoulder.  
  
"Where's Rose?"  
  
John grits his teeth. Where  _is_  Rose?  _What_  is Rose?  
  
He doesn't know how to answer, so he says instead, "Her magic backfired. I'm sure she's safe, but something..." He spots the clearing on the other side of the river, changes course. "I'm going to try to get her out of there."  
  
Roxy opens her mouth to say something, then closes it as John sets her down on the grass. Out here away from the fire, smoke covering much of the sky, it's almost entirely dark. Will Roxy be okay alone? Maybe it would have been more sensible to at least take the time to look for a lantern...  
  
But it's too late for that now. "You should get to the village," John instructs her. "If you go far enough downriver there's a bridge you can cross to get to the road, right?"  
  
"Yeah, but..."  
  
"I'm going to get Rose, and I'm going to try to save the house. If we can't put out the fire..." He bites his lip. "I don't think it'll spread all the way to the village, but you know, dry wood..."  
  
Roxy nods. "If I see it comin' I'll get them ready to leave. You just-"  
  
A splash interrupts them, louder than the crackling of the fire, and they turn at the same time to look at the river. A figure seems to be approaching, silhouetted by the glow behind it, and even in the dark John knows who it is.  
  
In a matter of seconds Roxy has her gun up and pointed at the shape, and John hastily pushes it to the side, saying, "Don't shoot!"  
  
"Why not?" Roxy asks, staring at him with wide eyes, but John is too busy watching Rose. She's crossing the river, one slow step at a time, feet hovering right at the surface as far as he can tell. Where in the world did she learn to do that? Walking on water shouldn't be easy - almost as difficult as walking steadily on air, where there's no indication of where to put your feet - and this is  _moving_  water at that. He's never seen her practice it, so how would she...?  
  
There's another splash as one foot goes under the surface again, and he understands. She's not actually walking on the water, she's trying to walk above it, levitating and moving her limbs to look like she's taking actual steps. And not doing that great of a job at it, considering at least one of her feet is already drenched.  
  
As she reaches the near bank, Roxy's gun starts to drift back into position, and John throws his arm in front of her - to stop her or to stop Rose, he's not sure.  
  
But there must be enough light for Roxy to see her daughter's shape in the figure, because her gun starts to lower again and she says, tentatively, "Rose...?"  
  
Her eyes light up the faintest bit. John doesn't remove his arm from between the two Lalondes. Rose's feet are solidly on the ground now, and John can see her wands in her hands. She takes another step, just within range, and he tenses, and-  
  
He feels the air move before he sees her arm rise, the slightest shifting of particles that resonates all around him and lets him push Roxy aside before the blast whooshes past them. It must hit something behind them, because there's a crashing thud and then Rose is raising her other wand to fire again, and John's not waiting around to see which of them she aims for.  
  
Roxy holds her rifle more like a shield than a weapon, stumbling back along the bank in shock. The glow from another shot of energy lights up her face before it zaps into the river beside her, and with the imprint of the beam still seared across his vision John grabs Roxy and moves up, up, as quickly as he thinks is safe.  
  
Something jolts against his shoe, sending pain through his foot and up his leg, but he ignores it and looks down for any more blasts. The growling sound below them must be Rose; John thinks he sees a scowl on her face as she tries to follow, shakily rising off the ground a few feet. But she's still nowhere near as good at levitation as he is, and as soon as he thinks they're mostly out of sight he starts flying along the river. If he can just put enough distance between them, give Roxy enough of a head start...  
  
"What the everloving fuck is going on?!" she demands, twisting in his arms to look back. John grimaces, trying to keep a solid hold on her; she's bigger than Rose, and heavier too, even if a (generally) less fussy passenger.  
  
"I think she's been possessed," John says simply. She has to be. Blowing up trees is one thing, starting a forest fire and then ignoring it is another, but trying to kill her own mother? It hurts to even think about. Rose would  _never_  do that, not of her own volition, and yet her own magic was inches away from accomplishing it. It must be too dark for her to see properly, or the smoke was in her eyes, or she's getting tired, because he's seen her hit targets from that distance. They're all lucky Roxy narrowly avoided becoming one of them.   
  
Once they're far enough away that the fire is only a glow in the distance, John comes down to a path in the woods and sets Roxy back on the ground. She stumbles on her feet for a moment but quickly rights herself, clutching her gun to her chest and looking up at John. The light that reaches them here among the trees is barely strong enough to illuminate the faint outlines of their faces, but John can see her nod.  
  
"Take care of Rose, 'kay?"  
  
Something like dread winds around John's stomach as he says, "I will."  
  
After all, taking care of Rose is his job as her familiar. No, it's not even that; even if he wasn't her familiar, he would want to save her, because she's her.   
  
But is it even possible to save her? He has no idea how to bring her back to her senses. How can he protect her from herself? From some puppetmaster he can't even see? How can he protect her home, the woods, her mother, the village, without hurting her first?  
  
He remembers, that first day they met, she had asked him a question. She had been wary at the time, suspicious that he would do anything to get out of an undesirable pact. Not thinking about the possibility that it would become necessary, someday, for both their own goods. He had said he shouldn't, because it was true, but he's known all along that he could turn against her if he wanted. If he needed.  
  
John watches Roxy disappear into the shadows beneath the branches, and turns around to where the fire lights up the opposite horizon, beckoning him back.  
  
What if he has to choose between saving Rose and saving everyone else?


	31. Chapter 31

Unsurprisingly, Rose is gone again by the time John gets back to the house. The building itself is still fine - it looks like his efforts from earlier worked, and the fire is hardly advancing in this direction anymore. But the forest is another story entirely, one that John isn't sure can be beaten with the same trick. He'd probably have to suck the air away bit by bit, because creating that big of a vacuum is not only very difficult but also very dangerous, and possibly something even he couldn't keep up right now. But in the time it takes to put out one section, the fire will just spread to another, and he'll be huffing and puffing until dawn.  
  
And that's only half the problem. He doesn't know where Rose is or what she's doing, if she's hurt or hurting someone else. What if she gets it into her head - what if someone puts it into her head to set more fires throughout the foothills? To find other people to attack? What if she tries more magic that blows up in her face, or she falls and breaks her neck trying to levitate too high?  
  
John hangs uneasily in the air, his concern for Rose warring with his concern for everything else. Dammit, if Rose was here she'd know exactly what to do!  
  
In the end, the problem he can see wins out; the fire is right here waiting to be stopped, but going in search of Rose could end up a waste of time. So he flies back down, close enough to feel the heat, and tries something, anything. If he uproots the nearby trees and bushes it'll have nothing to catch on, right? But no, that would take too long, and with the embers flying like this they might bridge the gap anyway.  
  
He leaves off in the middle of trying to knock a tree down to approach from a different angle. Throwing dirt over a fire should put it out, and he can move dirt pretty easily... but enough dirt to cover this? He'd just be creating a sandstorm, and he wants  _fewer_  disasters, not more.  
  
Not dirt, then. Maybe he should go with the obvious: water is the opposite of fire. But there's no way he can lift up enough water to put the fire out, either, at least not without rerouting the entire river.

Maybe he doesn't have to, though? Getting rid of all the fire can wait; first he should focus on trying to stop it from spreading. So maybe he should try to get just the edges wet?  
  
With no other options, he figures it's worth a shot. But moving the water is more difficult than he had anticipated. Solid objects are one thing, but liquid? Sure, he can carry it on the wind, but only by concentrating the air and moving it very fast, and it's still a messy process. Trying to use wind to separate the water from the river results in losing most of it right away, and then more spills while he's carrying it, and in the end he's barely splashing the trees.  
  
He's considering doing things the old-fashioned human way and going inside to look for a bucket (like that will help) when his priorities suddenly change again. A branch lifts up, wavering in the air, and unless there's another sky spirit nearby that means-  
  
"Rose!"  
  
She's not far away, pointing her wand at the branch as it goes higher and higher and then suddenly plummets to the ground when John's voice startles her. Immediately she sees him hovering nearby, and growls, a sound half animal and half unnatural. John is so busy watching her that he doesn't notice the twig coming up behind him until it hits him in the back of the head.  
  
"Hey!" he says, twisting around and rubbing his head, then twisting back. "You barely even moved your wands, that's not fair!"  
  
At least it was a small twig, not really enough to hurt. The rocks she's eyeing now, though - if she pelts  _those_  at him, they might leave some bruises.  
  
And it looks like that's exactly what she's going to do. With a flick of her wand, one stone jumps into the air in a less-than-graceful arc that nevertheless delivers it straight to her hand. Satisfied, she tosses the rock up and down a few times, then holds it up on her palm and flicks the wand in her other hand, and the rock shoots off in John's direction.   
  
Her aim may be good, but the movement was still incredibly obvious, and he dodges easily. Rose scowls and picks up another stone.  
  
"Seriously?" John says. "This is your best plan? To throw pebbles at me?"  
  
Rose shoots the next rock in the same manner, but a little faster, and John's initial triumph at moving out of the way again fades immediately when something else hits him in the leg. He jerks back, thigh stinging, and realizes that she  _threw_  the second stone at him, with her hands instead of her magic.  
  
"That's dirty!" he says, scowling. She's picking up another rock and John floats a little higher, prepared to melt into the wind, except she's not preparing to fling it at him, she's just... examining it. Closely.  
  
He tenses when she points her wand at it, but it doesn't move - no, it  _does_  move, just not off her hand. It's slowly getting larger, its rough, uneven surface expanding until it's bigger than her palm. Still, when she finally shoots it, it comes at him just as fast as the smaller stones.  
  
John is ready this time, and easily catches the rock with the wind, floating it up to his own hand. Sure enough, she's changed its size; it feels too light to be solid rock, the same weight but stretched over a larger area, and there's something a little unnatural about the way it feels under his fingers.  
  
But he has no time to be impressed. Rose is still angry that she missed, and is now hoisting several rocks into the air at once. John knows what's coming and vanishes before the spray of stones reaches him; by the time they thump uselessly against the ground behind him, Rose is already moving on to throw everything in her path in his direction. Sticks, pieces of bark, branches with leaves still attached - all of it just waiting for him to reappear. Power crackles at the tips of her wands, much more deadly than anything she could pick up off the ground, and John considers.  
  
As long as he doesn't materialize his body, he's practically invincible. But... he's practically useless, too. The only thing the wind itself can do to hurt her is suffocate her or pick her up and drop her, and both of those are far too dangerous. It doesn't matter how much of a threat she is to the landscape; he's not going to kill her. He just needs to find some way to incapacitate her.  
  
In this form it would be simple to get closer to her without retaliation, but he's not sure he wants that, either. The power she's learned to focus in her wands could easily stun him if she could hit him, and he knows that, the way she is now, if she wants to she will. She's smart, she knows what's going on around her, she knows how to make use of her environment... he doubts he could outwit her very easily.  
  
Damn her, why is she so perfect?  
  
Eventually she stops and looks around wildly, trying to locate him, though there's no way she will. The only way to find him in this state is to sense him, and he's pretty sure she's not that attuned to the air. So he takes the opportunity to swish around behind her, use the wind to float up a bat-sized branch, and throw it - gently - at her back.  
  
Maybe it was the sound that alerted her, or maybe she felt the rush of air, but she manages to dodge so that only one splintered tip grazes her dress, causing a small tear to open. She snarls. John frantically grabs the branch and swings again while he has the chance, and in the span of a second Rose points her wand at her own hand, something shimmers, and she stops the bat in her palm.  
  
Her fingers curl around the bark and for a moment John only stares. A blow like that should have  _hurt_ , at least, but she didn't even flinch. The wood collided against her hand like he was striking at solid metal instead of skin and bone.  
  
Rose takes advantage of his shock to rip the branch out of John's grip and throw it back at him. Of course she misses, but now he's weaponless and clueless again.   
  
What's worse is that Rose, unable to injure or stop him, has apparently decided that she has better things to do. She turns to a nearby pine branch and touches her wand lightly, almost gracefully, to the tip of the dangling needles, and it's hard to tell when the firelight is warring with the darkness but John thinks the green parts... turned blue?  
  
It's not unreasonable; he remembers her practicing color-changing spells on her yarn, a simple trick to change whatever inherent property makes something appear the way it does. She had been reading up on that kind of visual magic in hopes of someday learning something more impressive, like the kind of spells that would enable her to conceal an object's presence completely, or make part of a scene seem to change without actually moving anything. But she hadn't had much success with that before, and she doesn't seem to be now, either - whatever she's doing with her wands is causing only some shimmering and a sort of warpy effect in the air. She glares, moving her arms more violently.  
  
That's benign enough, John guesses, but no doubt she'll get frustrated with this and move on to something potentially more dangerous. He needs to stop her -  _without_  hurting her too badly, so no dramatic windy powers - and if the only way to do that is to take her head-on, that's what he'll do.  
  
The moment he approaches again, Rose jumps away, thrusting forward with both her wands. The blue pine needles fly off the branches and toward John's face, but it's easy to stir up the wind around him in a protective shield and send them flying every which way.  
  
When he lowers the personal tornado so he can see, Rose is preparing a new attack: instead of throwing twigs and branches at him, she's thinking bigger. Like, an entire tree bigger. He remembers her "cutting" down that tree for firewood with his help, but whatever she's doing this time is faster, chipping away at the wood on the trunk of one of the smaller trees in the vicinity until it starts to creak and lean over.  
  
He's too slow to stop her this time. Rose manages to knock the tree down right in his direction, and it's all John can do to vanish out from under it, rushing away in a gust barely perceptible among the crash of branches splintering and leaves going flying.  
  
Huh. So maybe she didn't really need him to help get that firewood.  
  
When he reappears a few yards away Rose is already starting the process again, with a bigger tree this time, something with more branches to ensnare him. Unfortunately for her, her new trick requires time and concentration, and John's not about to let her have either. Picking up whatever stones and pieces of bark he can find on the ground, he hurls them at her, using the wind to redirect them and confuse her (and make sure none of them hit her too hard). Rose quickly breaks off her own spell to sweep her arm in an arc, sending his projectiles ricocheting back as if they had hit a wall. John moves a few inches forward, starts up a second wave without pause, and Rose prepares to defend again.  
  
But he has the upper hand now. Her deflection arts are good, not perfect; occasionally she misses a beat and takes a hit, and he's getting closer all the time. Finally he gets within arm's reach and lunges forward, grabbing her in both hands and trying to rip her wands away from her.  
  
Rose immediately forgets the magic and struggles bodily, doing her best to shake him off, but humans get fatigued more quickly than spirits do, and she's been expending energy all evening. When John doesn’t let go, she flails all the harder, frantic and animal-like, even trying to bite him when his arm gets too close to her face.  
  
It's getting so hard to hold on to her that John knows if he doesn't do something now, he's going to lose his chance. Rose twists around, freeing herself from one of his hands, ready to fight off the other one and run, and without thinking John swings his arm around and feels his elbow connect solidly with her stomach.  
  
Maybe he imagines it, but in that moment he thinks he sees something rise in front of her face, like exhaled air but pitch black instead of pale. Then it's gone, and Rose is doubling over, one hand grabbing at his shoulder and slipping off as her whole body falls to the ground.  
  
Panic grips John when he sees her laying lifelessly in the dirt. No, no, he couldn't have... that wasn't hard enough, was it...? He's always having to remind himself that humans are more fragile than he thinks. But he never meant to...  
  
Immediately he's down on his knees, rolling her over and hovering uselessly above her as he tries to figure out what to do. Her body is limp and her mouth hangs slack; John holds a hand in front of it and concentrates every ounce of his focus into those nerves. Several seconds pass. He leans in closer, every muscle tensed, but still feels no breath.  
  
His mind starts to whirl. There has to be something he can do, but his brain is blanking. In one last desperate effort he prepares to force the air in and out of Rose's lungs, thinking maybe it'll jumpstart her system, only to feel something brush his hand as soon as he starts. He pauses, and breathes a sigh of his own when he confirms that, sure enough, Rose is breathing steadily again.  
  
She's okay, then, probably. At least, John notices as he sags in relief, most of the gray tint to her skin seems to have disappeared, and the faint color that belongs in her hair is coming back to it. Despite the frayed tears in her dress and smudges of ash here and there, she almost seems to be sleeping peacefully. Looking at her like that, John never would have guessed she was wreaking destruction on everything in her path five minutes ago.  
  
Speaking of. That destruction she set in motion is still wreaking itself, and even if Rose isn't here to help him, someone's going to have to deal with it. John stands up, floating Rose into his arms to move her somewhere safer, and takes off for the river.  
  
One problem down, one to go. He just has to hope it's not too late...


	32. Chapter 32

John supposes he should be thankful that he's come this far, but honestly, looking at Rose lying limp in his arms, he doesn't feel much better. She probably has less of a chance of dying, now, and certainly less of a chance of doing more damage. But he's no doctor; he's not even that familiar with basic human health. He can't be sure Rose is really okay, and then there's the fire on top of that, and who knows what happened to Roxy, and...  
  
The far side of the river is a mess of flickering shadows and unnatural orange glow, the fire behind him reflecting enough to light up the bank but not dispel the darkness between the trees. John touches down gently in the grass and lowers himself to his knees.  
  
Just as he's about to set Rose on the ground, a violent coughing wracks her body and she leans up, frantically trying to cover her mouth (some habits die hard, he guesses). The movement surprises him so much that he jumps away, using just the air to keep her suspended, but this seems to freak her out even more and he has to grab her other arm to keep her steady.  
  
In a moment he has her safely sitting beside him, and the coughs die down, though now that she's awake she's looking a little worse for wear. Her eyes keep unfocusing, and she's clutching one side, and now that he looks closer John notices numerous small tears in her clothes and scratches on her skin. One sleeve looks like part of the fabric may have even burned off.  
  
"Are you okay? Are you... back to normal?" he asks, kneeling next to her. Rose nods, coughs again, and twists around to look at the forest. For a long moment she only stares blankly, the firelight reflecting in her eyes.  
  
"We need to..." she finally says, starting to stagger to her feet and almost falling.  
  
John stands up with her, grabbing her shoulder. "Whoa, hey, are you sure you should be moving? Maybe you should stay here and rest, I can..."  
  
But she shakes her head, even though she's leaning on him to keep herself up.   
  
"No time," she rasps. "If we don't..." Another cough. "Put that out, then it..."  
  
"I know, but you're hurt. You might just make yourself worse."  
  
"John." Rose almost stumbles on the first step she takes. When John reaches out to prop her up again, she weakly pushes his arm aside, grimaces, and then looks directly at him. "Please."  
  
There's something pained about her expression, which should come as no surprise considering how beat-up she is, but for some reason the first thing John thinks of isn't her scratches and burns - it's the memory of her levitating that candle into the air and then dashing it into the grass.  
  
"...Fine," he relents. He probably can't fix this alone, anyway. "Do you have a plan?"  
  
Please say yes. Please say yes. Rose  _always_  has a plan, doesn't she?  
  
She coughs again. "What have you... tried?"  
  
"Well, earlier I was able to slow it down by sucking the air away from the flames... but I can't really do that over the whole thing. And before I knocked you out I had been trying to splash water on the trees around the fire, to contain it, but..."  
  
John looks at the conflagration in front of them and bites his lip. The fire is spreading with each passing moment. If he didn't have much faith in that plan before, what hope is there now? No bucket brigade can save them at this point, especially with just the two of them.  
  
"...I don't think you're that far off," Rose says. John looks at her. She stares at the river for another minute, cradling one elbow in her other hand, before she turns to him. "But we're going to have to go back to the other side."  
  
This time she doesn't struggle when he picks her up, and the moment he sets her down on the brighter bank, she takes off across the grass. John follows her stumbling pace to the river's edge, where it's nearly impossible to hear the water rushing by over the roar of the fire behind them.  
  
"But by now any amount of water we could throw would be a drop in the bucket compared to that," John says. "It'll just fizzle away into steam on contact."  
  
"Not if we use magic." Rose is taking up her wands again, fingering the smooth sides as she gazes at the river. "Remember those spells I used to manipulate the liquids in bowls? Swirling water without touching it, splashing it out of a dish. If we could do that here on a big enough scale, then maybe..."  
  
A flicker of hope replaces the doubt in John's chest. He couldn't move the water very well because he's a sky spirit. He's not in tune with water. But Rose has practiced this. She could very well do what he couldn't.  
  
She points one wand at the river, takes a few moments to steady her hand, and then slowly arcs her arm up and around. A small stream of water follows, as if from a faucet but weaving through the air like a snake, drops spilling here and there. Rose thrusts out her arm and flicks her wrist and all of it goes cascading into the fire with a hiss.  
  
When she tries again she gets more, maybe a little less than a bucket would have held. Then a full bucket, then half a barrel. The next time the blaze on a bush goes out, leaving its charred skeleton black and dripping. But there's sweat gleaming on Rose's forehead too, pasting her bangs to her skin, and the fire envelopes more than just a few bushes.  
  
"Are you sure you can keep doing this?" John asks, floating a little closer. He knows he should find some way to help too, but he can't leave her, not right now.  
  
Her breath sounds labored when she replies. "I don't have much of a choice, do I?"  
  
Part of John wants to say yes, she does, being human means always having a choice and he's not sure choosing to work herself to death is the right one. But looking at her readjusting her grip on her wands, he mentally takes it back. Of course she doesn't. She's Rose. She has to fix the mess she's made and she has to do it with her own hands, or she'll never forgive herself.  
  
"John," she says, snapping him out of his thoughts. "If you can move solid objects with the wind, you can move liquids too, right?"  
  
"Well... kind of, it's harder since they're formless and have to be contained, but I was-"  
  
Rose cuts him off. "Good. Try moving the water with me."  
  
"Moving the...?" John looks at the river and remembers his earlier attempts. He spilled a lot of it, but probably most of the problem was scooping it out of the river, because trying to wedge the air in underneath the current was messy. So if Rose manipulates the water itself to lift it out, and he just  _catches_  it... then...!  
  
As she pulls another great blob of water from beyond the bank, John directs the air under and around it, pushing it away. Rose's eyes widen as the water is wrenched out of her control and shoots rapidly toward the fire in a chaotic spray. The drops disappear almost before they reach the flames.   
  
"Wait, wait," John says when Rose looks at him, "I'll get it next time. Do it again."  
  
She does, and this time he streamlines his gust of wind so the water stays together, shooting as if out of a hose at the branches of a tree. The flames start to die down there, the fire's progress toward them halted - at that tree, anyway.  
  
With each new blast of water a little more of the frontline disappears, until there's a good stretch of blackened remains impeding the fire's spread in this direction. Rose stops to wipe the sweat off her face, leaving a smudge of ash on her skin. John tries a little harder to dispel the smoke around them; she really shouldn't be inhaling too much of it, especially now when she needs air the most, but it's hard to do that and focus on the water at the same time.  
  
"Can you move it around by the house?" Rose asks, her voice tired and crackly. "I want to make sure it doesn't get any closer."  
  
John nods and changes position so he can sweep more easily in that direction. As Rose goes back to funneling the water out of the river, he takes it up and channels it farther, toward the side of the fire threatening the house. It looks like his earlier work has paid off; the building itself is still untouched, though smoky. But if they're going to start anywhere, they might as well start there.  
  
Now that Rose doesn't have to concentrate on getting the water to the fire - a task that soon would have become too much for her, probably, considering the extra distance - she can extract more of it at a time from the river. It's all weightless to John, so no matter how much she gives him he gets it there. Splashes the size of cups spill on the bank, some from John's imperfect handling, more from Rose's unsteady manipulation and the somewhat awkward transfer between them, but no matter how much hits the ground, the river keeps flowing.  
  
"When you channel the water out, try moving it with the stream first," John suggests between throws. "Not perpendicular to the water."  
  
Rose thinks for a moment, and takes his advice. Instead of trying to pull the water straight up, she sweeps it, letting it continue to flow almost naturally out of the river and into the air before arcing it around to John's waiting hands. It must be a little easier on her, because she keeps doing it.  
  
It's still difficult, he can tell by her sluggish movements, but soon they've developed a rhythm and are making steady progress. The fire is disappearing, inch by inch, and each new splash of water has a little farther to go. Looking at their success so far, John doesn't want to think about how much the fire has spread up the foothills. If only he still had complete control of the weather. A rainstorm would probably make this easier...  
  
After a quick trip to the house to make sure it's still safe, they continue around the perimeter of the fire as best they can. If they keep striking at the edges, Rose reasons, eventually they'll have it surrounded by a moat of sorts, an impassable wall of wet, charred wood that won't easily catch again.   
  
The work is slow, and grueling, and as the night wears on Rose looks increasingly haggard, her movements increasingly sloppy. More than anything John wants to let her take a break and catch her breath, but neither of them could do this alone, and he's worried if she sits down she won't be able to stand up again. So they go on until the eastern horizon is tinged with a hazy light, and still the river flows, still the fire burns.  
  
Maybe it's the dawn, or maybe the fire really has shrunk a good deal, but it looks much more manageable to John in the early sunrise. Even with the smoke covering the whole sky, diluting the light, for the first time the glow from the flames isn't all that's allowing him to see.  
  
Still they keep working. John has to move the water farther and farther, over blackened trunks and still-smoking ash, fighting against the thick fumes in the air to get the liquid to the last bit of fire. In the dull and grayish dawn light, Rose looks like she might collapse each time she starts raising more water from the river.  
  
Finally, finally John watches the steam disappear from the last wave he dumped over the bushes, and thinks he can see the end. He looks back at Rose, hunched by the river, and then flies a loop around the trees that are still burning. It's small enough; he gathers what strength he has left and pulls, sucking the air away from the fire until it starts to abate. As he lets the air flow back into the vacuum, he breathes out heavily and floats nearly down to the ground.  
  
All that's left here is embers and a few small flames, which flicker out when John stirs up the dirt to cover the patches of red. When he flies a little higher, he can see bits of fire here and there, but surrounded by charred plants and scorched ground, he's pretty sure they won't be going anywhere until he can give them the same treatment.  
  
He's never felt more tired in his life than when he returns to Rose, and she manages to look even worse. She's still standing by the river, arms limp at her sides, staring at the great clouds of smoke hovering around the forest, or what's left of it. She doesn't even blink as John comes down and sends one more gentle blast of wind around them to clear the air.  
  
"Rose?" he says, and her head tilts in his direction, though she seems to look right through him. John can't really fault her; she must be exhausted, and has probably had a lot to think about in the time he's been gone.  
  
Finally her eyes focus, glance at him, turn away and narrow.  
  
"It should be going out now," John tells her. "At least, where it isn't, it's contained. They'll burn out on their own, or I'll get them on the next sweep. I just wanted to make sure that you're okay..."  
  
Rose still doesn't look at him, and her voice has an uncharacteristically scratchy harshness to it when she responds. "Don't worry about me."  
  
"You sure? You look really worn out..."  
  
"I'm sure."  
  
She seems pretty intent on not moving, so John looks out at the remains of the woods again. Maybe after he sees to the rest of the fire, he can try dispersing the smoke so the air will clear faster. That should be easy enough.  
  
But that can wait a few more minutes. Despite what Rose says, she's obviously not okay.  
  
Putting on a tired smile, John drifts closer to her. "At least it's over, right? We stopped it, and we're both alive. That's what matters. You won't have to worry about it anymore."  
  
At least he thought so, but Rose still seems to be worrying about it even now. Her breathing is nearly rasping; John stirs up the air again to keep the debris out of her lungs and eyes, since she's hardly blinking.  
  
He tries again: "And that was a really good idea, with the river. I guess we make a pretty good team, huh?"  
  
"Don't. Don't!" Rose hisses, holding one hand out as if that could stop him from talking.  
  
John hesitates a few yards away, watching her arm slowly fall back into place by her side. Her fist is clenched so hard he can see her knuckles, pale through the ash covering her hands.  
  
"How could I," she starts, voice low, and stops just as abruptly. "It was fucked up," she says instead, and almost... laughs? "I should have known the first time. When I tried to summon a creature from the Void and did it so terribly, wonderfully wrong... it's such a bad idea. The books and scrolls weren't just being overdramatic when they said the Horrorterrors are not to be trifled with. How could I be so  _stupid_?"  
  
Her eyes are fixed on some point in the distance, invisible to her in the smoky dawn. She looks dead on her feet, as if the gray in her skin forgot to fade from the circles under her eyes, and for too long John doesn't know what to do.  
  
"I think you're being too hard on yourself," he eventually says. "You did stop it, after all. It's not your-"  
  
But the words die on his tongue and this time Rose really does laugh, a dark and hoarse sort of chuckle, and he's almost never heard her actually laugh out loud but he's sure this isn't how it's supposed to sound.  
  
"Thank you for being honest," she says. "Stopping it hardly counts for much when I started it in the first place. But I appreciate the sentiment."  
  
Silence hangs over them, eerily loud after the deafening roar of the fire. The sound of the river flowing nearby, once so normal, seems muted in comparison. No frogs, no crickets, no birdsong - it doesn't sound like morning or night, like they're trapped in some intermediate space where things simply exist. John looks back at the charred remains that used to be the edge of the woods, now painfully visible with the sunlight seeping through the cover of smoke above them.  
  
"So," he finally says, unable to stand her wordless trembling. "What now?"  
  
Rose swallows audibly, and her voice is thin and weak when she speaks. "Now-" She looks at her hands as if she hadn't considered the very possibility of a  _now_. Time's ceaseless march, a future, the sun climbing higher and then setting again, life going on-  
  
She says again, "Now, we..." and John is too late to stop her body from crumpling to the ground with a thud.


	33. Chapter 33

The first thing that comes back is pain.  
  
Even before she opens her eyes, Rose is aware of a burning sensation in her throat, and parts of her limbs feel unnaturally hot. When she tries to move her legs, something scrapes against them, itchy and uncomfortable, and between that feeling and the overwhelming fatigue in her body she hardly does more than twitches.  
  
At least opening her eyes doesn't hurt... much. The ceiling of her room is blurry until she blinks more than a few times. Without lifting her head she can tell the room is dim, but it's daytime - probably the curtains are closed and light is seeping in around them.  
  
Suddenly she jerks her head up to cough, every breath stinging from her lungs to her mouth until tears are welling up at the corners of her eyes. When the fit is over she drags one arm out from under the sheets to place a hand against her forehead. Does she have a fever? She can't really tell... But as she lowers her arm she notices a red patch sticking out from under her sleeve, hot to the touch when she brushes the fingers of her other hand over it.  
  
A burn. So it wasn't just a nightmare.  
  
Every movement takes effort. It feels as if her entire body is covered in invisible weights, pinning her to the bed from the inside, and the simple act of half-sitting up is a triumph in itself. Or would be, if she was capable of feeling triumphant right now. The feeling isn't coming. Instead she feels a vague mass of other, less pleasant emotions: anxiety, dread, swirled around in mingled confusion and regret, but all deadened by the dull weight of apathy. Not nearly as grateful to be alive as she thinks she should be.  
  
The house is quiet, when she cares to listen - no sounds from downstairs, nothing outside. Rose thinks about her mother for the first time since she started the ritual, and then immediately stops. That's too many questions, and too many pricks of guilt and fear in her already-pained chest.  
  
Instead she thinks about John. He has to be okay. He was okay the last time she saw him - never mind that she can't quite remember when that was. Most of her memories are still blurred together, foggy like a dream but with sharp enough colors to burn into her retinas. But John was in them, and he was fine. He can't die.  
  
(Unless his death is heroic or just. Unless he were to die trying to save her-)  
  
No. No no no. John is alive and well. She could summon him right now to confirm it, if she could just gather the strength to open her mouth and say his name.  
  
She wishes she could look out the window. A masochistic curiosity compels her to see the damage for herself, perhaps in some feeble hope that it's not as bad as she thinks. But stalwart skepticism tells her it's probably worse - it's probably a good thing she couldn't get up right now if she tried.   
  
The sheets dip a little at the foot of the bed as she curls her toes. She could at least assess the damage on her body, but even that sounds like an endeavor at the moment. The minimum amount of effort reassures her that there's probably nothing broken. They hurt, but she can move all her limbs. Around the fog in her brain she can recall her name, her birthday, where she lives, deduce that once her headache is gone her head will be fine.  
  
But it'll be a long time before she's back to normal. She's as sure of that as anything else, and she hardly has the energy to raise her head when she feels the rush of wind that heralds John's arrival.   
  
"Oh, good, you're awake," he says, immediately drifting closer.  
  
Rose looks up at him, face blank despite the wave of relief that pushes through her apathy.  
  
"H..." she tries to say, but all that comes out is a rasp and another coughing fit. After a minute she manages, "How long?"  
  
John is floating by the edge of the bed now, at her level, as if sitting down. "Have you been out? More than a day. Your mom said you were unconscious, so we figured you were just really worn out from everything that happened..."  
  
Rose closes her eyes. The memories are still seeping back in like the remnants of a bad dream, complete with the fear and dread that always accompanied those visions. It feels like a lifetime ago, but a day isn't enough time to remove herself from the scene. A year might not be. For a brief moment she almost wishes she could have stayed unconscious.  
  
But when she looks up, John is watching her with concern all over his face. Oh god, her mother must have been worried sick. She's put them through hell already; she can't stay asleep forever when there's so much responsibility to be taken. Even if she doesn't move an inch, it's still running away.  
  
Working her throat until it feels a little more cooperative, she manages to say, "Is my mother okay?"  
  
"Yeah, she's fine," John says, eyes never leaving her. "A little tired but unharmed. She went into town a while ago, actually, to get some more medicine. I guess she used up the last of the salves this morning." When Rose doesn't even attempt to answer, he goes on, "She should be back soon. I'm sure she'll be glad to see you're up."  
  
Rose nods wordlessly. Eventually John asks, "Are you okay? How do you feel?"  
  
It still takes a little while for Rose to reply, but her throat is warming up to the idea of speech now.  
  
"Stupid," she answers. "I feel stupid. I can't believe I even thought about trying that. I should have realized..."  
  
Her fingers clench into a fist in the sheets, and John reaches a hand out tentatively.  
  
"Hey, you couldn't have known..."  
  
"Couldn't I?" Rose laughs, and the sound is more bitter and hollow than even she expected. "I thought you said seeing suits me. Why couldn't I see that coming? It was so obvious, I shouldn't have even needed a crystal ball or a mirror. Putting open fires out near the forest, when a fire was what I was trying to  _prevent_... it was too risky right from the start. Of course it was some ridiculous self-fulfilling prophecy bullshit. What else did I expect?"  
  
Now that she's started, for some reason it's hard to stop. "The book led me to believe that the worst that could happen was nothing changing, but why should I have believed that? I didn't know the first time, either, what really could happen. I don't know anything. Trying to summon again was sheer idiocy. You were right; I can't control anything from the Void. I was stupid," she says again, and falls silent.  
  
She doesn't need to look at John to know he's grasping for something, anything to say. Finally, he decides on, "Well, yeah, I guess it was risky... but as your familiar I should have stopped you, shouldn't I? It's my job to oversee the things you do, and I didn't... in fact, I could have stopped the fire when it started, but I didn't do that either. I was confused and let myself get distracted... I was too busy focusing on you to put it out when it was small, even though I know I should have. So. I'm sorry. It's my fault too."  
  
He's looking at the floor as if in shame, and a different kind of guilt twists in Rose's chest. That's not what she meant at all. This is  _her_  fault, her responsibility, her cross to bear. Not his.  
  
"...There's nothing for you to apologize for," Rose says. "You wouldn't have been in that situation at all if not for me. And you did well in stopping it all, anyway. Meanwhile, all those awful things I did... I can't believe myself."  
  
"But..." John looks up. "But they were controlling you, weren't they? That wasn't really you?"  
  
Slowly Rose shakes her head, closing her eyes.  
  
"I don't think so," she says. "Perhaps I wasn't fully aware of my actions while I was taking them... but that doesn't mean there wasn't a strong part of me active in the decision-making."  
  
"What do you mean?" John sounds equal parts confused and concerned, and Rose sighs.  
  
"I believe it was more as if... they overrode the conscious, logical, moral part of my mind and left only the base and primal part. Who I am on the inside, buried deeper than the societal values and ethical concerns that define how we act around others. They..." One hand bunches in her sheets as she tries to remember, tries to put it into words, though most of her is trying hard to forget. "They capitalized on my animalistic instincts and desires. They used my own fear to get inside my head, then amplified the parts of me that I, like any rational person, try to keep in check."  
  
John says nothing, so she continues. "It wasn't the Horrorterrors gleefully destroying whatever they could. It was simply me, doing everything I'm too afraid to do when petty concerns like morality and safety hold me back. Testing the limits of my skills. Reveling in my own power. Fighting off anything and everything that presents itself as a threat to me." Her lips twist, only the imitation of a smile. "Am I strong enough to defend myself? Am I capable of killing another human being? I finally got my answers. I just had to carve out a piece of my soul to fi-"  
  
"Stop," John says, so quietly that it surprises Rose into looking up. He's gazing at his hands on his knees, and she thinks he's dejected until he raises his face to glare at her.  
  
"What is this crap?" he says. "Terrors from the Void wormed into your consciousness and you think that makes you a bad person?"  
  
"No, I-"  
  
"You just said so!" John nearly shouts. "So what if deep down you like controlling things? Isn't that normal? This- this doesn't define who you are, Rose!"  
  
Rose returns to staring at the folds in the sheets covering her. "You can't deny that the fire started because of my intentional and poor decisions," she says flatly.  
  
"No, I can't." John answers without hesitating, and Rose nearly flinches. "But you know what  _you_  can't deny? That your poor decisions weren't aimless stupidity or recklessness, they were a concentrated effort to stop the fire! Would a bad person have gone to such ridiculous lengths to try to prevent something they weren't even sure was going to happen? And as soon as you snapped out of that whole grim dark thing, you got right to work on trying to put it out. Why do you always act like your bad decisions are the only ones that count?"  
  
More quietly, he finishes, "You were trying to protect everyone, Rose, that's all," and as if his anger was the only thing propping him up, goes back to looking at the floor. "Who cares if there's parts of you that only want to blow things up? Ninety-nine percent of the time you bury that kind of selfishness and do the right thing. Because you're a good person."  
  
In the silence that follows, Rose opens her mouth and finds her throat constricted. Her eyes sting, and somehow she chuckles.  
  
"You really don't mince words, do you?" she says, wiping at her eyes before he can see, and before he can reply adds, "Thank you."  
  
John smiles, and silence settles between them again. After a while, he says, a little happier, "Anyway, let's not talk about that. Let's talk about something nicer."  
  
"Yes," Rose agrees, "let's bottle up all our negative feelings and shove them under the rug where we don't have to look at them."  
  
John punches the edge of the bed lightly, as if afraid to even brush his knuckles against her. It strikes Rose as a ridiculous amount of restraint at first, but when pain shoots up her arm the moment she tries to move it, she's glad for his thoughtfulness.  
  
"No," he says. "None of that psychology babble horse shit. We're looking at silver linings right now."  
  
A fond sigh escapes Rose's lips. "You are just adamant about there being a silver lining to everything, aren't you? The world could end and you'd still find some good in it."  
  
"Hey, clouds are kind of my thing!" John argues. "I am very familiar with silver linings, Rose. Even thunderclouds have them if you look from the right angle." He pauses before going on, "Look, you're alive. And your mom's alive, and I'm alive. The fire never got anywhere near the village, and it didn't burn down the house, and there's still plenty of forest left. Right?"  
  
"Right," Rose repeats, too weak to come up with some pithy retort. Honestly, it's kind of nice, having this optimism gently pummeled into her right now.  
  
"And... if that was really you out there, and not the Void creatures manipulating you... then you were right, you really  _did_  get to test your power. Even if it was in a way that leaves such a bad taste in your mouth. At least now you know."  
  
Rose flexes one shaking hand, remembering in uneasy, broken snippets how much energy she had felt coursing through her at the time. A sinister kind of energy, to be sure, but energy nonetheless.  
  
"I can't be certain the Horrorterrors didn't enhance my skills at all," she says carefully. "They may temporarily have granted me some of their power when they got into me... perhaps even unintentionally."  
  
"Still," John says. "It's not like you did anything super beyond your level. And even if they gave you a little boost, knowing how to do all of that still came from you, right? I mean," he fidgets as he searches for the words, "you do have the potential to do those things. Levitating. Knocking down trees. You even moved the water from the river without them! So..."  
  
His point lingers in the air. Rose leans back and looks at the ceiling.   
  
Maybe he's right. Maybe, if nothing else, she should be glad for the chance to test herself. It seems a little callous to feel good about any part of such a disaster, but she can't ignore the import of her actions any more than she can ignore the experience itself.  
  
Of course, she also can't expect to pull those tricks out of thin air again. Even if it wasn't the power of the Horrorterrors, it was to some degree facilitated by her irrational state of mind. She won't be trying to levitate like that again anytime soon, and she certainly won't be attempting any more summoning. But it's something to work toward. A goal that she now knows is in reach, one of many things she still has left to do.  
  
The fire may have burned up the path she used to walk, and yet by some miracle, a road still lays in front of her. She can't change the past, but she has always believed that she can change the future.  
  
For the first time since she woke up, Rose feels a touch of hope warm her chest.


	34. Chapter 34

It takes a few days before Rose is ready to go outside. She was hurt pretty badly, after all; John isn't sure what, exactly, that feels like, since his body isn't quite physical the way hers is, but certainly her burns didn't look good, and her voice was all messed up, and her scratches and bruises weren't going to go away overnight. He knew enough not to be surprised that she needed to sleep more than usual, and was reluctant even to sit up at first.  
  
Her mother had come home in the late afternoon of the day Rose woke up. John heard her rattling around downstairs for only half a minute or so before she immediately appeared to check on her daughter, and almost instantly there were tears in her eyes. She had practically thrown herself at Rose's bed, saying over and over how glad she was that she was okay, and if John wasn't mistaken the corners of Rose's eyes were starting to shine too, so he quietly slipped out of the room.  
  
Watching over Rose became a joint effort. Roxy handled all the food and medicines, of course, bringing trays of juice and soup upstairs and insisting on checking Rose's injuries at every meal, even when Rose insisted equally stubbornly that she was capable of doing that herself. But her mother couldn't spend every moment by her side, so when she reluctantly left, John filled in to keep Rose company. After a while he even was assigned-slash-allowed the duty of applying some of the salves to Rose's worst burns. (Roxy watched with eyes like a hawk the first time or two, but, to John's great relief, didn't comment.)  
  
So after days of sleeping, bedridden reading and writing, and slowly gaining back the strength to move, Rose was finally able to get up, walk around the house, and then step out the back door.  
  
John watches her carefully as she moves with slow steps into the yard. She's seen the damage, of course; he described it to her at her request, and she's been well enough to walk the few feet to her window. But it's one thing to survey the scene from the second story, through a pane of glass like looking at a picture, and another to walk among the ashes and dead, brown grass.   
  
For a few moments, Rose only stares at the blackened forest, taking it all in. Then she turns in a half-circle to look at the house.  
  
If there's one thing John is willing to be proud of, that's probably it. The building is a little grayed on one side from the ash, and enough smoke seeped inside that Roxy had to air it out for days, wearing her coat indoors to ward off the chilly autumn wind blowing through. (John helped blow it out, but traces of it lingered, the smell clinging to the walls, and he was more concerned with taking care of Rose than chasing away every last wisp.) But other than that, the house is fine - still perfectly livable, if suffering from less pleasant scenery now.  
  
The forest, on the other hand. There's nothing left standing nearby that remotely compares to the shape the house is in. What trees remain are slim, charred husks, and most of the underbrush has been reduced to ash. Farther away they can see bits of greenery only touched by the flames, and beyond that the woods proper, but in the immediate area all that's left is a blackened wasteland.  
  
John tries to remember what it looked like before, but it's difficult to recall the details. The kind of view that one takes for granted when they see it every day. He supposes that soon enough the new image will be burned in his mind with just as much clarity - thick ashes, sparse and bare trunks, a shadow of what used to lay here.   
  
"...I'm going to look into how to restore forested areas after fires," Rose says from beside him. "Surely this kind of thing has happened before, but nature always recovers." She pauses, walks a little closer to the woods. "Still... if we can help it recover faster, I think we should. If we clear out the debris, bring in some fertilizer or such, maybe replant some saplings and flowers from the unaffected areas..."  
  
John simply nods. When he moves forward, the dust under his feet swirls around before settling back into the remains of the grass.  
  
He says slowly, "I know I said way back when that I'd never want to be an earth spirit, but... maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all."  
  
Rose looks at him blankly.  
  
"I bet an earth spirit could make it all grow back so quickly," he explains. "Just do their earthy thing and bam, flowers everywhere... All I can do is blow the ash away."  
  
Come to think of it, a water spirit might have been able to put the fire out with ease, and a fire spirit probably could have controlled it, if nothing else. But he's just a wind spirit. What's so special about air, anyway? He'd always been so proud to have hailed from the sky realm, but now...  
  
A light breeze picks up, scattering a little bit of the ash in front of him. John doesn't even have to lift a finger.  
  
"...Let's go back inside," Rose says. She sounds tired, but John suspects that's not exactly why she wants to leave.  
  
In the house, she settles on the couch in the living room and stares out the front window, where the trees still look normal. John's gaze drifts from the glass to Rose. There's something odd and unsettling about her being so still all the time. Not that she was a ball of energy before, but he always got the sense that even when she was quiet she was thinking, internally in motion, constantly planning and wondering and creating.  
  
Now it hurts to move her body for too long, and her eyes are so often blank, like she hasn't fully woken up yet. John doesn't like it.  
  
He zips away for a moment, and when he comes back Rose has hardly moved, so he positions himself in front of her and pulls out a hand towel from behind his back.  
  
"Hey, Rose, I wanna show you something."  
  
At least her eyes brighten when she looks at him. One of Roxy's wizard statues floats through the air into John's hand, and he tosses the towel over it.  
  
"See this statue?" he asks, turning the shape around several times, knocking his hand against the side. "Now watch this..."  
  
He holds the statue out on one palm with the towel draping down over his fingers, pauses for a moment, and then whips the towel off with his other hand. The statue is gone; John shakes his hand out, shakes the towel out, tosses it at Rose.  
  
"Ta-da!"  
  
The towel lands softly on Rose's lap. She drags her arms up to examine it, then lets it fall and claps, a little slowly but smiling.  
  
"Thank you, thank you," John says with a bow before turning to fall back onto the couch. Rose shuffles closer so they’re sitting side by side.  
  
"Impressive. But I hope you know how to make things magically appear, too, because I think Mother is going to want that back."  
  
John stretches an arm around her shoulders. "Oh, don't worry about that. It's right... here!"  
  
He twirls his wrist, and by the time Rose turns her head to look, the statue is in his hand again. Rose watches it float back to its perch, and then looks back at John. He winks.  
  
"One of these days I'm going to figure out how you do these things," Rose says, leaning against him.  
  
"Heheh. Rose, you are the smartest person I know, but this time you're wrong. Not even you can crack my secrets."  
  
"Is that a challenge?"  
  
"No, actually, it's a fact, but nice try."  
  
"Hm."  
  
A quick sideways glance reassures him that Rose isn't offended - good, joke secure - and they fall into a comfortable silence for a few minutes.  
  
But as it wears on, John starts to think.   
  
"...Rose, can I ask you something?"  
  
"Of course."  
  
For a few more moments, he plays with a crease in the fabric on his leg.   
  
"I just... I want to know why you didn't tell me," he finally says.  
  
When he glances over at Rose, she looks back evenly. "Would it have made a difference?"  
  
Would it? Rose is the most stubborn creature he knows, after all. When she's convinced she's right, she shuts down any argument he attempts to make so easily that even he starts to doubt he has a point. Would he really have been able to stop her?  
  
But before he can come up with an answer, she averts her eyes and says, "No, I'm sorry. That's not the point. You're right, I should have told you. I guess I just..." She sighs. "For starters, I suppose I was afraid you were going to try to stop me."  
  
"Well, yeah."  
  
"I know. And you would have been right to do so. But perhaps I was afraid of that too. At the time, I really thought it might have been my only shot to find out what was going on with those visions. And..."  
  
Rose looks for a long time at the window before continuing. "I guess I just thought of it as my problem, not yours. I saw the fire in my glimpses of the future, I made the decision to prevent it, so I had to deal with it. I can't..." Her fingers dig into the cushion beside her. "I can't simply sit back and wait for others to solve problems for me. If you want something done, you have to..."  
  
"Do it yourself," John finishes, trying to keep his voice soft. "But you know that's not true. It's not like letting people help you now and then makes you weak or anything."  
  
"I know that, but..." Rose takes a long breath.  
  
"Just promise me you'll tell me next time," John says. "We can work through it together. You're brilliant, Rose, but you shouldn't have to take the whole world on your shoulders. Your problems are already my problems. That's why I'm here."  
  
He smiles. Rose seems to relax, just a little, or maybe she's simply too tired to stay cynical.  
  
"I will," she says. "I promise."


	35. Chapter 35

Once Rose has recovered a little more, she and John go out flying again, surveying the damage from above. A large chunk of the woods is blackened and bare, but the higher up the foothills they go the more greenery spreads out beneath them.   
  
"Can we keep going?" Rose says as the burned section slips out of sight. "To somewhere unaffected. I want to... see what it's like, where the forest has grown normally."  
  
John just nods and carries them higher.  
  
He sets down at the top of a small cliff, where a grassy crag sticks out over a moderately steep hill. Standing on the edge, Rose can see a long, long way - over green treetops, red-brown leaves, charting the path of the river down to the dark spot near a clearing, her house, and away into the distance. The horizon is enveloped in fog, not quite burnt off in the weak autumn sunlight, making everything pale and misty.  
  
It's a nice view, when you ignore the patch that's missing. Rose sits near the edge of the cliff in what might be a brazen way if she wasn't aware of John watching her from the corner of his eye, ready to move at a moment's notice. The grass is pretty dry, at least, not as dewy as it looked by the river.  
  
John settles next to her and says, "How long do you think it'll take?"  
  
"To grow back?" Rose looks out over the landscape again, a patchwork of oranges and greens. "Years, at least. Maybe my whole life. It would be fitting, I guess, in some cosmically just sense."  
  
John swings his feet lightly. "Well... you'll probably be around for a long time. Witches tend to live long lives because of potions and spells and stuff, and familiars make it less likely you'll die in an accident or anything. So I think you could see it come back."  
  
"I suppose," Rose says. "Provided I'm still here at the time."  
  
"It shouldn't be too difficult to come back if you leave. After all, you have a familiar who can fly." John grins. "When you're one hundred years old and hobbling around takes too long, I can just carry you everywhere."  
  
"Are you sure you're going to want to associate with wrinkled old senior citizen witches? There's no telling how infamous I may become in the next eighty-two years."  
  
"Of course I will! And even if I don't, as if that would happen, if you call for me I'll come anyway. I'm your familiar, Rose, I'm bound to you for life."  
  
Rose continues to gaze out across the forest, a hint of a soft smile on her lips. "That's kind of..."  
  
"What?" John turns to look at her, and she shakes her head.   
  
"Nothing, never mind."  
  
"Come on, kind of what?"  
  
Rose looks at her hands, at the ground below, back to the horizon - not at him. "When you think about it in those terms, it's... almost sort of romantic."  
  
"Oh. Heh... 'til death do us part?"  
  
They fall quiet for a bit. John shifts his hand against the grass.  
  
"But I mean, just because I'm your familiar doesn't mean I always  _have_  to be around or anything... If we got sick of each other and you sent me away, we could go years without talking. So it's not like..."  
  
He trails off, and Rose hums her understanding.  
  
After a long moment, John ventures, "Do you think we'll still be together then? I mean, not  _together_  necessarily - well, maybe together, I don't know-"  
  
Rose stops him with a quick kiss. "I know what you meant. And I don't know if we will." In her pause she reaches for his hand and laces their fingers together. "But I hope so."  
  
John smiles, and looks out across the hills. A few more minutes pass in silence. The sun disappears behind a thicker patch of cloud and then gradually slips out again, lending a little more light to the hazy landscape.  
  
"It's rather sad, though," Rose remarks after a while. "A familiar is bound to their summoner until their summoner dies... and then what? They return to their realm?"  
  
"That's usually how it works, yeah."  
  
"And that's it. I die, you go home. I'll probably cease to exist and someday you'll forget me."  
  
"I wouldn't say that," John says, but his eyes focus on the ground and she knows he can't say for sure. Part of her wants to ask if he's been summoned before, if he even remembers the experience, much less to whom he was bound; part of her doesn't want to know. Part of her doesn't want to admit there's been anyone else, or that there will be anyone else, but eternity is a long time to be alone.  
  
She leans over to rest her head on John's shoulder. "It's all right. There's no shame in moving on. It may be my whole life, John, but it will be a tiny fraction of yours."  
  
"The best fraction," John says, wrapping an arm around her, and instead of questioning the likelihood of that assertion Rose smiles.


	36. Chapter 36

The days get colder as autumn wears on. There's a kind of dreary feel to everything, John thinks, muted and gray. He's not sure if it's because of the landscape, or how quiet Rose has been while she recovers.  
  
Both John and Roxy had insisted that she hold off practicing her magic until she was certain she's strong enough to handle it again. But - perhaps not as surprisingly as John initially supposed - Rose hasn't even tried. She's spent her days talking to him, reading entirely non-magical books, knitting. Sometimes she writes. On warmer afternoons they sit on the porch. John's not sure she's picked up her wands since the fire.  
  
It's several weeks before he sees her enter the observatory again. It feels almost empty now that her supplies for the ritual are gone. They heaped what was left in a pile near her books and other paraphernalia, but for the most part the room has been untouched. A thin layer of dust coats the windowsills and everything Rose never cleaned up remains exactly where it was, waiting, neglected.  
  
Or maybe abandoned, John thinks as Rose looks blankly at the stacks of bowls and books and candles. For a long moment, he's afraid she's thinking about chucking them out and quitting. No more levitation, no more scrying, no more being a witch. But when she kneels down, all she does is wipe the dirt off her knife and start sorting through the remains of her dried-up herbs.  
  
"Can you do something about the dust?" she asks without turning around. Relieved, John sets to work cleaning off the windowsills.  
  
There's not much to straighten up, so it doesn't take long for Rose to sort out the things she doesn't need anymore from the ones that might still be useful. When she's done, she stands up and rubs off her hands.  
  
"This chalk is pretty much gone. Most of the incense and candles are done for, too."  
  
John finishes dusting off another book. "Do you need to get new ones, then?"  
  
"Mm." For a moment Rose doesn't answer. John looks up at her. "Not immediately, I think," she finally says. "It can wait until I'm sure we'll need more."  
  
She walks over to join John where he sits just above the floor. He gestures at the books spread out in front of him, the last thing left unexamined. "What about these? Do you plan to keep all of them, or...?"  
  
"I'm not sure yet. They may be useful resources, but some of them are probably a little below my level now."  
  
As if to illustrate her point, the next book John sets on the clean stack is a beginner's guide to something or other, simple enough that he barely spared the time to read the cover. Rose passes it up to pull out the thicker volume underneath it, and doesn't speak again until John is almost done dusting off the next one.  
  
"...You know, I'm not sure I ever finished this." She puts the book back. "I'm going to have to go through everything again to remember what I actually read and what I only skimmed."  
  
"Has it been that long?"  
  
Rose hesitates long enough that John looks up again. "No, it's not that. More like... when I think back on the last several months..." She nudges one of the books with her toes. "The fire had already consumed me. I was always studying for the sake of knowledge, to become stronger, but as time went on, I became so focused on stopping those visions, I forgot about everything else... It almost feels as if I've woken up from a daze. I'm hardly certain of what I was doing, and even less sure what to do now."  
  
For a moment the room is silent. The next book John sets down, a rather heavy tome, thuds against the top of the pile and sends up a thin cloud of dust he missed. He blows it away.  
  
"Well, you're going to keep studying, aren't you?" he says instead of reaching for something else to clean. "You just proved to yourself that you have the capability to master all these things you've been working on, so..."  
  
Rose bends down to spin another book around and look at the title. "Of course. But that's just a matter of practice. It's not a long-term nor a comprehensive plan for the future."  
  
Snippets of their conversation on the hill a few days earlier float back to John, the way they had wondered whether they'd still be together years from now. It hadn't really occurred to him to question exactly what they would be doing in the meantime. As a spirit, it doesn't matter much to him, but for Rose...  
  
Another thud brings his attention back to their work. Rose has dusted off her book and added it to the stack.  
  
"But I thought being a witch was kind of your... thing," John says. "Didn't you say a long time ago that to do anything for a living you'd probably have to leave? At least, anything you're really interested in?"  
  
"Most children do leave home at a certain age, yes. Perhaps that age has arrived for me as well." Rose sets the final book down on the pile and pauses. "I will admit I have my reservations about leaving my mother here alone. Not because I don't trust her to take care of herself, but, well..."  
  
"You think she'll be lonely?"  
  
"...Yes."  
  
After a long moment, Rose shakes her head the smallest bit and starts pushing the edges of the books so they line up straighter. John floats into the air and drifts toward the window.  
  
"So what exactly do you want to do?" he finally asks. "I mean, in terms of a not-magic profession, or new place to live, or..."  
  
Rose sighs. "Well, my ideal future would be traveling to learn, I think, but money could become an issue. Most professions do require a stable location, and..."  
  
"And you don't want to stay in one place."  
  
"Be honest, John, would you be happy tied down for ten, twenty years at a time?"  
  
"Well..." John glances out the window. "But I don't want you to do anything you don't want to just for my sake..."  
  
"And I don't want you to do anything you don't want to just for my sake."  
  
It's starting to drizzle outside, making the wasteland even grayer, but the scent of wet grass still wafts its way into the observatory. There's something fresh about it, revitalizing.  
  
Rose joins him at the window. "Restless hearts. We'll make do."  
  
Together they watch the rain grow stronger, suddenly audible as it bounces against the roof.  
  
"Do you remember the huntress I told you about?" Rose asks. "The one who supplies me with whatever magical artifacts she happens to obtain? I was thinking of joining her, perhaps."  
  
"What, giving up country life and going full feral?"  
  
"We're not going to live in the jungle and wrestle tigers with her, smartass. We could travel with her for a while. Make money from odd jobs if we have to. Maybe eventually go off on our own. It's a big world out there, and we've spent our whole earthly lives in this tiny part of it."  
  
John looks out the window again. The scene below them doesn't look too tantalizing right now, damp and wasted, but the air is pleasantly cool and all traces of the smoke from the fire are gone.  
  
He's seen the world from the sky, knows just how big it is and how much there is to explore. He knows how it works. The rain will bring new life, the earth will sprout again, and by next spring the forest will be reviving. They can help, maybe speed it along, but it's just like Rose said - nature always recovers on its own. It won't need them.  
  
From here on out, they really can do anything.  
  
"Yeah," John finally says. "That sounds good."


	37. Chapter 37

They'll leave in the spring.  
  
Rose can't guarantee that the huntress will be back then, but it's been a while since she's dropped by, and she tends to hit this area early in the year when she does. And if she doesn't show up, they decide, they'll go anyway.  
  
In the meantime, they have a lot of work to do. Rose is already making plans to transplant some bushes and young trees down from the foothills when the worst of winter is over. John will be able to move them with ease. Until then, they can work on clearing out the ashes and dead plants that still litter the forest.  
  
She's healing well enough that the labor isn't much of a problem, at least not with John's help. The last of her injuries still remain, faint scars on her skin and occasional bouts of coughing, but she feels more certain of herself when she picks up her wands now. The fear that initially made her hands falter is fading, replaced by pure power, the strength she knows she possesses somewhere deep down.  
  
It's funny, when she thinks about it. When she first started practicing magic, she was so sure of herself, even though she hardly knew a thing back then. She'd like to think she's grown a lot since then, despite - or maybe because of - the hiccups along the way. Even if it hasn't been all that long.  
  
Not even a year, she reminds herself, trying to deduce if the shine on the grass this morning is dew or frost now. It was spring when they met, wasn't it? And autumn isn't quite over yet.   
  
But so much has changed in such a small amount of time. A year ago she never would have dreamed she'd end up here. Becoming a witch, perhaps, summoning a familiar. But like this? It's surreal in the best possible way, a constant reminder of both the dangers and the endless possibilities magic opens up. It destroys, yes, but it also creates in a fashion she thinks she's just now coming to appreciate.   
  
She has a familiar. She can cast spells, knock down trees, see the future, and fly. She's  _dating a spirit_.  
  
That's the oddest of them all, really, a step towards eccentricity even for a witch, but the more time passes the more... well, normal it feels. John is fitting in well, for a spirit, adapting to their human customs and schedules. When they cuddle up together under blankets to ward off the cold he doesn't complain about the excessive amount of fabric anymore, and he even does chores, speeding up their trips into town and restocking the firewood when it gets low. It's the strangest juxtaposition - such a charmingly ordinary-looking boy paired with the constant floating, the wind tricks, an aura of magic that, once realized, never quite goes away.  
  
The sound of his voice drifts out of the kitchen to where Rose is looking out the window, and then the sound of her mother answering. It's a surprisingly comfortable backdrop, considering how much of Rose's life here has been spent in terse silence.  
  
And maybe John was right about that, too, she thinks with a pang of guilt. For all her mother's faults, certainly Rose could have tried a little harder to meet her halfway. But whatever their respective mistakes, those days seem to be over. Roxy took great pains not to be so absent while her daughter was recovering, and Rose was too tired (and perhaps too changed) to read anything but motherly concern into the gesture, and has been surprised to find how... nice that feels.   
  
It's not an instant fix, no, but there's still time. Time to finally share in each other's interests, time to find some common ground. Time to say what they need to before Rose has to go, to make up for the years they failed to get on the same page. To be a family again. It's not a concept Rose is too familiar with, having denied herself and her mother that title and its associated connotations for so long, but she thinks she's beginning to understand.  
  
Yes, she decides a moment later as a gust of wind behind her heralds John's imminent arrival. There's so much to understand, so much to learn, so many ways to move forward. And that's exactly what she intends to do.  
  
John leads her outside despite how wintery the landscape is starting to look. The air chills Rose's chest as she takes a deep breath, but the clean, sharp tang of it is invigorating more than anything else. All traces of smoke are gone from the air and her lungs, and, looking at the clouds hanging in the pale sky above them, John promises snow soon. Rose tries to imagine how it will look from above, the world covered in pure and sparkling white, erasing the forest's scar.  
  
From John's back she can see the tops of the mountains, already tipped in snow, and in the other direction the river winding lazily to the horizon and beyond, where they'll soon be headed themselves. Rose has little idea what lies down that road more than a few days' walking distance. But she's starting to feel that that's half its charm, really; the thrill of something new, the constant uncertainty of whether it's danger or wonder that lies around the next bend.  
  
The thought makes her somewhat restless, her body buzzing with a muted kind of excitement the same way her skin tingles in the chilly wind this high up. To strike out for distant lands, bearing the weight of all they've experienced in the past year and the prospect of all they hope to find... The feeling is much the same as the giddy anticipation she gets from floating, when John persuades her to let go and feel the open air around her.  
  
Perhaps it once scared her, but she's become accustomed to it, a little - at least to the feeling of having nothing supporting her but the implicit promise that he won't let her fall. Still, when he's left her hanging for long enough that the oddity of her position catches up with her brain, and he drifts up in front of her, she has no reservations about wrapping her arms around his neck. He in turn wraps his around her waist and pulls her up against him and kisses her, and she could almost laugh at all the romantic clichés about feeling like flying that have never been more appropriate.  
  
Truly the greatest mistake she's ever made. If this is what magic has brought her so far, she can't wait to see where it will lead them next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's it! again, thank you to everyone for reading, and an extra thank you for all the support and comments and kudos! I'm sorry for not responding to comments individually (I just never know what to say) but I read them all and they make me very happy
> 
> now that it's rewritten I don't intend to do anything else with this story, but back in the homestuck heyday I did briefly entertain ideas of what a sequel would be like. as Rose said, they'd probably start out traveling with Jade and then eventually go off on their own. Rose would be seriously considering her future and starting to wonder more about the concept of immortality, and particularly the magical items rumored to grant it (philosopher's stone, holy grail, fountain of youth, etc.). perhaps she would discover some clues as to the whereabouts of such items, or start seeking them herself...
> 
> along the way, they would likely run into other magical beings for the first time. maybe a wizard living by the sea claiming to be a displaced prince, and his water spirit familiar, and the pirate they feud with. a mage said to be a prophet, who has lived as a hermit ever since the tragic death of his friend, which still haunts him (perhaps literally). another seer, this one blind and in the employ of a palace, protected by several red-clad knights, including one Rose might already know...
> 
> anyway I never did intend to see that through, so I'll leave the rest up to your imaginations! cheers~


End file.
